Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 4 Sessions

Today = vs the Sep 11 published unit ($1,862). Live opening marks (Mon, near the open ~7:30 MDT); daily move is vs Friday's (Sep 11) published update; September MTD starts from Monday Aug 31's official month-end close. September MTD vs Aug 31 close ($1,867.39).

Baseline note (Sep 14): today’s move is measured against the Sep 11 published update ($1,862). September MTD is measured against the Aug 31 official month-end close of $1,867. August is locked closed in the monthly table at +8.84%.

Position Scoreboard — Sorted by Portfolio Weight

Today = vs the Sep 11 published unit. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live opening marks (Mon, near the open ~7:30 MDT); daily move is vs Friday's (Sep 11) published update; September MTD starts from Monday Aug 31's official month-end close.

Portfolio Allocation by Category

Live Track Record — Since January 22, 2026 (Actual)

▲ Current month through today; July and August 2026 are locked closed; return measured from the Jan 22, 2026 entry. * Jan–Mar 2026 are estimated partial-period returns carried from our May 2026 updates; they predate our daily archive (begins 15 April 2026) and are shown as estimates, not as-published daily marks. Apr–Aug cells are locked closed from official month-end closes; close-basis restatement pending the anchor review. No backtests, no hypotheticals. Units are price-return; dividends are not accrued.

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Safe Growth is marked at $1,796 near the open, -3.6% versus Friday's published update and -3.8% for September (August locked closed at +8.84% in the track record table below). This is a broad Monday de-risking, not one bad position, and it comes from two weekend stories that pull the book in opposite directions. First, the AI trade took a sentiment shock. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Saturday arguing the industry should slow the pace of its most capable models; Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly agreed, OpenAI pushed its IPO to 2027, and President Trump rejected the whole idea on Sunday. Nasdaq-100 futures fell about 1.5% overnight, and the memory and networking names (SK Hynix, Marvell, Arm) fell 6-7% before the US open. Our view: this is a headline about posture, not demand. Nvidia guided $108 billion of revenue for a single quarter two weeks ago, hyperscaler capex is still running near $800 billion a year, and Altman himself clarified that "pacing" does not mean stopping. But the market sells first and sorts it out later, and it is selling everything attached to the data center, not just the chips: NVDA (-4.8%) is the obvious one, while ETN (-6.6%), our data-center power name, and URA (-6.3%), which trades as the AI-power proxy, are being hit harder than Nvidia itself on no company-specific news.

Second, the oil story got worse in a way that matters more than another Hormuz headline. Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline, the 4-5 million barrel-a-day line that carries Gulf crude to the Red Sea and was the kingdom's main way around the Hormuz blockade, after drone strikes on its pump stations attributed to Iran-backed militias in Iraq. At the same time Houthi forces took Perim Island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the port of Mocha, so the Red Sea exit is contested too. Put plainly: Saudi barrels now have no clean route out to the east or the west. The diplomatic off-ramp slipped as well: Oman postponed Monday's Salalah meeting, where Iran and the Gulf states were supposed to sign off on a temporary Hormuz shipping route, so the one headline that could have knocked $5-10 off crude today is not coming. Brent touched $108 overnight, WTI is above $104, US diesel is still at a record $6.06 a gallon, and Citi raised its 2026 Brent forecast this morning with a $150 scenario if the Hormuz disruption persists. XLE (+1.6%) is the only green position in the book, which is exactly the job it is here to do.

All of that lands two days before Wednesday's Fed decision, where a 25 basis point hike, the first in more than three years, is priced at roughly 86-90%. The hike itself is no longer the event; the dot plot and Chair Warsh's press conference are. Our base case is a one-and-done "credibility hike" framed around core PCE at 3.3% rather than the 2.4% core CPI, with the dots showing at most one more. The Fed is why the hedges are not hedging this morning. Gold broke below $4,300 and is selling off into the hike with a firmer dollar, so NUGT (-10.1%) is the worst position in the book at two times the miners: gold is trading as a rate-sensitive asset today, not a war hedge, which is what tends to happen in the 48 hours before a hike. TMF (-2.1%) is stuck for the same reason; bonds cannot rally on a growth scare while oil sits above $100 and the Fed is about to raise. MSTR (+2.8%) is the one outlier: bitcoin is holding near $77,500 and climbed while tech, gold and silver all fell, the first time in weeks crypto has decoupled from tech in a helpful direction. No trade before this update; we are not chasing anything into Wednesday, and TMF stays on watch.

Bottom line: SG is down -3.6% today. The AI complex is repricing a weekend of headlines, oil is repricing a real loss of Saudi export routes with the diplomacy postponed, and gold is repricing a Fed hike. Energy is doing its job in this book; everything else is waiting on Wednesday's dots.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Monday, September 14, 2026

Trade Ledger — Entry & Exit History

Every position we open and close, newest first. Realized P/L on closes is marked against the original entry price.

Entry prices verified against the Jan 22, 2026 cost basis. “Open” = still held today. An entry marked “Closed <date>” was exited in that rotation — its realized result is shown on the CLOSE row for that date. This ledger builds our public track record going forward.