Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 4 Sessions

Today = vs the Sep 17 published unit ($1,831). Live opening marks (Fri, near the open ~7:30 MDT); daily move is vs Thursday's (Sep 17) 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 18): today’s move is measured against the Sep 17 published update ($1,831). 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 17 published unit. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live opening marks (Fri, near the open ~7:30 MDT); daily move is vs Thursday's (Sep 17) 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 $1,837 near the open, +0.4% versus Thursday's published update and -1.6% for September (August locked closed at +8.84% in the track record table below). Against last Friday's update the book is -1.3% on the week. Two things about today before the story: it is quarterly triple witching, with stock options, index options and index futures all expiring at once, and S&P Dow Jones runs its quarterly index rebalance at the close, so the last half hour will print heavy volume that has nothing to do with news. The week itself had a clear shape. The Fed hiked Wednesday, the market spent Thursday deciding it liked it, and overnight the Bank of Japan followed with its own quarter point to 1.25%, the highest Japanese policy rate since 1995, on a split 7-2 vote. Two of the world's three largest central banks raised rates in the same week, the ECB is already two hikes into its cycle, and the reaction was relief rather than fear: the Nikkei rose 1.5%, the yen still weakened past 157 because the split vote read as a cautious committee, and the US 10-year ended an eight-session climb Thursday at 4.94%, with the 30-year at 5.34% and the 2-year at 4.73%. Yields are little changed this morning. Bloomberg's read was that Warsh's inflation language did the work the hike itself could not, pushing the market to price one more increase this year and as many as two in 2027 while pulling the long end lower. TMF (-0.2%) is giving some of Thursday's bounce back with the 10-year drifting, which is a reminder that one good session does not undo a one-more-hike dot plot. It stays on watch.

The politics arrived on schedule. Hours after the decision Trump said rates should be 1% "or less," called the Fed board "very hostile" and "very political," and said he was "relying on Kevin, but he's got a very tough board," while confirming he spoke with Warsh before the meeting. Semafor's Liz Hoffman put it plainly: Trump "cares less about any specific outcome than about winning, and he won by replacing Jerome Powell with Warsh." For a bond holder the risk here is not the next hike, it is the noise. The October meeting lands six days before the midterms, the pressure for a hold will be loud, and the December meeting is where the dot plot's one more hike most likely lands. Term premium, the extra yield investors demand for holding long paper through political uncertainty, is the piece of the 10-year that a credible Fed cannot lower on its own.

Oil is the second reason the week ended calmer than it started. Brent is down for a third straight session to about $103 and WTI is sitting on $100 after briefly trading below it, because Saudi Arabia says it will have roughly half of the East-West pipeline's capacity back within days and is offering extra cargoes to Asian refiners through ship-to-ship transfers off Oman's port of Sohar, with US Navy help. Phillip Nova's Priyanka Sachdeva: "Recent efforts to restore Saudi export capacity have reduced some of the immediate supply anxiety," and if Hormuz traffic keeps improving "some of the geopolitical premium can unwind further." Brent is down about half a percent on the week, which is remarkable given what happened inside it. The war did not pause to let that happen. Saudi Arabia and the Houthis traded strikes again Thursday, debris from an intercepted Houthi drone killed one person inside Saudi territory, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said a tanker was hit trying to transit Hormuz, and NPR's week-in-review has the Houthis holding Mokha and the Bab el-Mandeb islands, 32 kilometers from Djibouti, with Washington having "shown no interest in getting involved" beyond hosting US-Houthi talks in Oman last weekend. And the pump has not felt any of the relief: diesel set another record at $6.40 a gallon, regular gasoline is $4.44, up 16 cents in a week and $1.23 from a year ago, within 12 cents of May's record, and the Washington Post's survey of analysts says the pipeline damage is turning a shipping crisis into a broader supply disruption with "the worst still to come." That is the inflation the Fed is hiking into and the problem the White House has seven weeks out. XLE (+0.2%) is firmer with crude flat on the week; the position was bought for a supply shock that is being rerouted, not resolved. NUGT (+1.3%) is higher with gold at a one-week high near $4,400 as yields retreat; a week ago gold was trading as a rate-sensitive asset into the hike, and this week the same relationship is working in its favor.

The third thread is the data center, and Thursday produced three separate data points in one session that the AI build-out is supply-constrained rather than demand-constrained, one week after the slowdown essay. Micron added another 5% after Intel's Lip-Bu Tan said memory bottlenecks get worse in 2027, not better. One of the larger Nvidia-backed GPU cloud providers raised its rental prices about 20% effective October 1, an H100 hour going from $3.85 to $4.50, and Futurum's Daniel Newman called it "just another example" of demand that "remains off the charts." And Generac rose 18% on an $8 billion deal to supply Amazon with backup generation for data centers, which is the clearest possible read-through for the grid and power equipment trade. NVDA (+0.3%) is higher on it. ETN (-1.0%) is giving back part of Thursday's 5% move with no company news either way; the Generac deal is the same power story Eaton sells into, and the stock had run a long way in two days. MSTR (+7.9%) leads the book by a wide margin, and the reason is flows: bitcoin is back above $78,000, up about 2.5% in 24 hours, and spot ETFs took in $159.5 million Thursday, with BlackRock's IBIT alone at $183.7 million, the first net inflow after $746 million left in the two sessions around the Fed and the failed CLARITY vote. The week is still net negative by about $587 million, so one day is a turn in direction, not a trend, but the regulators are moving without Congress: CFTC Chair Selig and SEC Chair Atkins both said this week they will write crypto rules under existing authority, and Deutsche Bank said it will launch institutional bitcoin custody by year-end. Saylor's case is that banks lending against bitcoin never needed the bill, and the sell side is piling on: Alliance Global started coverage at Buy with a $217 target, on top of the Canaccord ($179), B. Riley ($175) and Barclays ($160) raises earlier this month, while the company keeps buying back its own stock. One week ago this name was the drag in both books; the concentration risk has not changed, only the direction. MSTR stays on watch. PPA (-1.4%) is soft, EWW (-0.2%) and INDA (+0.1%) are a touch lower, with India's Sensex logging its longest weekly losing streak since 2020, and URA (+0.2%) is up with uranium spot near its highs. No trade before this update.

Bottom line: SG is up +0.4% today and -1.3% on the week. The market took two central bank hikes, a $100 oil price and a Houthi land grab and ended the week calmer than it started, because the Fed sounded like it meant it and the Saudis found a way around their own pipeline. What to watch into next week: whether the East-West restart actually happens on the promised timeline, whether bitcoin ETF flows stay positive for more than a day, and whether the 10-year can hold under 5% once Fed speakers come out of blackout. Expect today's close to be noisy; that is the calendar, not the news.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Friday, September 18, 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.