Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 7 mark ($1,807.30), which was emailed and texted. The Oct 6 row was archived but never emailed. Live marks (Thu, ~8:33 MDT, a few minutes after the open); daily move is vs Wednesday's (Oct 7) mark, the one that was emailed and texted to you; October MTD starts from Wednesday Sep 30's official month-end close. October MTD vs Sep 30 close ($1,802.53).

Baseline note (Oct 8): today’s move is measured against our Oct 7 mark ($1,807.30) — the number that was emailed and texted to you yesterday morning. That mark finished the day +0.02% away from Wednesday’s official close of $1,807.58, so unlike yesterday there is no meaningful gap between the two bases: against our mark the book is +0.2%, against Wednesday’s close +0.2%. October MTD is measured against the Sep 30 official month-end close of $1,803. September is locked closed in the monthly table at -3.47%.

Position Scoreboard — Sorted by Portfolio Weight

Today = vs our Oct 7 mark. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Thu, ~8:33 MDT, a few minutes after the open); daily move is vs Wednesday's (Oct 7) mark, the one that was emailed and texted to you; October MTD starts from Wednesday Sep 30's official month-end close.

Portfolio Allocation by Category

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

▲ Current month through today; July, August and September 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–Sep 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 $1,811 a few minutes into the session, +0.2% against our Wednesday mark and +0.5% for October, with the year at -5.7%. First the basis, because yesterday we owed you three numbers instead of one: Wednesday’s mark of $1,807.30 was taken at 8:05 in the morning and the book closed the day at $1,807.58, a difference of 28 cents on an $1,800 unit. The number we sent you was, as close as makes no difference, the number the day ended on. Against our mark the book is +0.2%; against Wednesday’s official close it is +0.2%. Those agree today, and that is the whole disclosure. Seven of the fourteen positions across both books are higher and seven are lower, and for the first morning in some time the two books have split: Safe Growth is up while High Risk is down 1.7%. That is the diversification doing what it is supposed to do, and it is worth explaining why.

Oil took another leg up overnight and this book owns that. WTI is near $92 and Brent is above $104, both up roughly four percent, on three things stacked together rather than one headline. Tanker attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz have continued — around nine vessels hit in the past week — which undoes the flow recovery that briefly pushed crude lower on Tuesday. A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico has forced producers to shut in output. And US commercial crude inventories drew down by more than the market expected. XLE (+1.7%) is the single best contributor to the book today and is +32.5% since entry. We have been saying for weeks that the Strait is the variable running this portfolio; this is the week it paid rather than cost.

The bond and gold selloff paused, which is why the two positions wearing watch badges are today’s biggest percentage gainers. The 10-year is around 5.28% after printing 5.365% earlier this week, the highest since April 2002; Wednesday’s solid 10-year auction broke the buyer’s-strike narrative and the 30-year has come back to roughly 5.65% from 5.70%. Gold is near $4,160 after touching a two-month low of $4,104. So NUGT (+3.4%) and TMF (+2.4%) lead the scoreboard. We are not going to let that read as vindication. NUGT is still -47.5% since entry and TMF is -32.6%; one session of relief in a 2x miners fund and a 3x duration fund does not change why we proposed replacing both. A 3x long-bond position was bought for rate cuts, and the Fed hiked in September. That is the argument, and a good Thursday does not answer it.

Which brings us to the thing we owe you from yesterday. The Fed’s September minutes were released at 2:00pm Eastern on Wednesday, after our mark went out, so you have not had our read on them. They were more hawkish than the vote suggested. All nineteen officials backed the hike to 3.75–4.00%, and most said a further increase would likely be appropriate by year end, citing energy prices, AI-related capital spending, and inflation that has now run above the 2% target for more than five years. The market is not buying it: futures price roughly a 20% to 25% chance of a hike at the October 27–28 meeting. That gap between what the Fed wrote down and what the curve expects is the single largest risk sitting under both of these books right now, and it resolves on the data. September CPI is October 14.

The rest of the book is mixed and mostly small. ETN (+0.8%) is marginally higher, EWW (+0.7%) and INDA (-0.7%) are roughly flat, PPA (-0.3%) and NVDA (-0.8%) are slightly lower. URA (-2.6%) is the weakest position: uranium miners and advanced-reactor names are selling off together again, with the whole complex down sharply over the past month, and nothing about Google’s twenty-year agreement with Constellation has changed. It stays a hold and it stays small. MSTR (-2.9%) is the other drag and it is a bitcoin problem, covered in the High Risk note — one share here against four there.

Bottom line: SG is up 0.2% today at $1,811 a unit, +0.5% for October and -5.7% for the year. Energy carried it, the bond and gold rebound helped the two positions we most want to replace, and the uranium complex gave a little back. What to watch: the 10-year against 5.28% and the 30-year against 5.70%, the tanker count in Hormuz, and September CPI on October 14, which is now the test of whether the minutes or the market is right. The TMF and NUGT replacements remain with our team, no trade made; you will see the decision here the day it is made, with prices.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Thursday, October 8, 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.