Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 13 mark ($1,807.47). Tuesday’s update was emailed and texted, so this is also the last figure you received; there is no separate emitted basis today. Live marks (Wed, ~7:56 MDT, about half an hour after the open); the daily move is vs Tuesday's (Oct 13) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received. September CPI was released at 8:30 Eastern, BEFORE this mark was taken, so the market's reaction to it is already inside these prices. Tuesday's tape rose after our mark, so the move against Tuesday's official close is larger than the move against our mark; both are printed, for the book and for every position. October MTD starts from Wednesday Sep 30's official month-end close. October MTD vs Sep 30 close ($1,802.53). Tuesday’s official close was $1,814.62 — 0.40% above our mark — so on the close basis today is -1.8%.

Baseline note: today’s move is measured against our Oct 13 mark ($1,807.47), which is both the figure published on the website and the figure emailed and texted to you yesterday morning — the same number, so there are two bases today rather than the three Monday’s missed send forced. Tuesday’s official close was $1,814.62, 0.40% above our mark, because the tape rose after we marked. Measured from that close the book is -1.8% rather than -1.4%, and the close basis is the one your own screen will agree with. The Today column in the position table is on the our-mark basis so it ties to the headline figure; the vs-close reading is printed beside it, and for four positions the two readings differ in sign. September CPI was released at 8:30 Eastern, before this mark was taken, so the reaction to it is already in these prices rather than still ahead of them. 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 13 mark, with the vs-Tuesday’s-close reading beneath it wherever the two differ. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Wed, ~7:56 MDT, about half an hour after the open); the daily move is vs Tuesday's (Oct 13) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received. September CPI was released at 8:30 Eastern, BEFORE this mark was taken, so the market's reaction to it is already inside these prices. Tuesday's tape rose after our mark, so the move against Tuesday's official close is larger than the move against our mark; both are printed, for the book and for every position. 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 $1,781 about half an hour into the session, -1.4% against our Tuesday mark and -1.8% against Tuesday’s official close of $1,814.62 — the close basis being the one your own screen will agree with, because the tape rose 0.40% after we marked yesterday. Two things in this book changed character today and both belong at the top. October has turned negative: -1.2% month to date, against +0.3% yesterday. And the year now reads -7.2%, the weakest this book has been in 2026. Yesterday’s update was emailed and texted, so unlike Monday there is no third basis to reconcile — the number you received is the number we are measuring from.

September CPI is the whole of today, and the important mechanical point first: it was released at 8:30 Eastern, more than an hour before we marked, so what you are reading below is the reaction and not the anticipation. The print was hot on every line that matters. Headline inflation rose 0.6% on the month and 3.7% on the year against 3.6% expected; core rose 0.3% and 2.6% against 0.2% and 2.5% expected. The core miss is the one that moved money, because core is the series the Federal Reserve claims to steer by, and it has now stopped falling. The market repriced the Fed immediately and violently: odds of a hike at the October 27–28 meeting went from roughly 22% yesterday to about 49% this morning — a coin flip — with better than a 95% chance of at least one increase before the year is out and roughly a 40% chance of two, double what it was a day ago.

How that landed on the curve tells you what kind of day this is. The two-to-five-year part of the Treasury curve moved most — the 5-year yield rose about nine basis points to 5.10%, the 10-year about seven to 5.29%, and the 30-year only four, to 5.60%. When the front end leads and the long end lags, the market is repricing the central bank rather than its own long-run inflation expectations, and that distinction matters for how durable this is. It also explains the calm underneath: the S&P is off about 0.6%, the Nasdaq about 0.8%, and the VIX is at 15.5 — a level that is not consistent with fear. This was an arithmetic adjustment to a discount rate, not a scare, and we would rather describe it that way than borrow drama the tape has not supplied.

The uncomfortable symmetry in this book deserves your attention, because it is the clearest illustration of what diversification actually does. XLE is +1.4% against our Tuesday mark, +0.2% against Tuesday’s close — essentially the only real strength in the portfolio — and it is +37.6% since entry, still the strongest long-run holding we own. It is up because energy is expensive. But expensive energy is precisely what produced this morning’s inflation print: gasoline rose 9.1% on the month and accounted for more than half the entire increase in the index, with gasoline futures around $3.26 and up roughly 77% on the year, crude near $95 and Brent near $106. So the position that is working is the cause of the number that hurt everything else in the book. That is not a hedge in the textbook sense, where one holding offsets another’s loss. It is a transfer: the book owns the problem and the compensation at the same time, and today the compensation was much smaller than the problem. We would rather say that than present XLE as a call we got right this morning.

The damage was concentrated in the gold complex, and NUGT was the worst position in either portfolio. It is -10.7% against our Tuesday mark, -7.1% against Tuesday’s close. The chain is direct: a hot inflation print pushes expected policy rates up faster than it pushes inflation expectations up, which raises real yields, and gold pays no coupon to defend itself against a higher real yield. Gold fell about 1.8% on the day, the miners about 3.7%, and silver about 4.8%. NUGT is a 2x daily-reset fund on the miners, so it takes roughly twice the miners’ move and it did. Now the part we insist on repeating: NUGT is -50.6% since entry and it remains the single worst holding in this book. To put a number on why leverage is the reason rather than gold: NUGT is down about 57% from its February 27 high while the unleveraged miners are down about 27% from that same day. The leveraged product has lost more than twice the drawdown of the thing it tracks, which is what daily resetting does to you in a choppy decline. It stays on watch, and we are not going to pretend a single bad session is what put it there.

TMF handed back yesterday’s relief inside one session, and we want to be straight about that because we flagged it in advance. It is -2.2% against our Tuesday mark, -1.6% against Tuesday’s close and -31.2% since entry. Yesterday this letter said that a 3x daily-reset bond fund having one good morning on a five-basis-point move was a flight to safety rather than a thesis repaired, and that flights to safety reverse. It reversed the next morning, on the first piece of real information. It stays on watch. Elsewhere the book behaved as a diversified book should on a rates shock, which is to say it lost money in an orderly way: URA is -3.0% against our Tuesday mark, -3.2% against Tuesday’s close, still carrying the datacentre-power correlation we flagged yesterday and did not design; MSTR, the single share this book holds, is -2.9% against our Tuesday mark, -1.8% against Tuesday’s close; EWW is -1.4% against our Tuesday mark, -1.3% against Tuesday’s close and INDA is -0.9% against our Tuesday mark, -0.9% against Tuesday’s close as a firmer dollar pressed on emerging markets. PPA is +0.4% against our Tuesday mark, +0.6% against Tuesday’s close and is the only other position green on both bases. One name flips sign between the two bases and is worth checking against your own screen: NVDA is +0.6% against our Tuesday mark, -1.6% against Tuesday’s close. ETN does not flip but the gap is wide, at -0.3% against our Tuesday mark, -2.2% against Tuesday’s close, as is XLE's; on any position where the two readings differ, the close-basis figure is the one your account will show.

Bottom line: Safe Growth is at $1,781 a unit — -1.4% against our Tuesday mark, -1.8% against Tuesday’s official close, -1.2% for October, which has now turned negative, and -7.2% for the year. A hot core inflation print moved the Fed back onto the table, real yields rose, and everything in this book that depends on a low discount rate — gold, long bonds, uranium — paid for it, while the energy position that helped cause the print was the only meaningful offset. Housekeeping, unchanged and stated once so the thread stays shut: our review of replacing TMF and NUGT is closed, we are holding both and every other position unchanged, and no trade was made at any point during that review. What we are watching: the Federal Reserve on October 27–28, now priced near a coin flip rather than a hold; whether the five-year yield keeps leading, which would tell us this is policy and not inflation expectations; and the November 3 midterms, where a 77% year-over-year move in gasoline has made energy prices the most politically live number in the economy.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Wednesday, October 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.