Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 15 mark ($1,739.36). Thursday’s update was emailed and texted, so this is also the last figure you received; there is no separate emitted basis today. Live marks (Fri, 7:51 MDT, twenty-one minutes after the open); the daily move is vs Thursday's (Oct 15) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received. IMPORTANT AND THE REVERSE OF RECENT DAYS: Thursday's tape ROSE sharply after our mark -- the market staged a V-shaped recovery into the close -- so the move against our mark is LARGER and more flattering than the move against Thursday's official close. The close basis is the one your own screen agrees with, and today it is the harsher of the two. Both are printed, for the book and for every position. MSCI published its non-operating company decision after Thursday's close and before this mark, so the reaction is already in these prices. October MTD starts from Wednesday Sep 30's official month-end close. October MTD vs Sep 30 close ($1,802.53). Thursday’s official close was $1,781.31 — 2.41% above our mark — so on the close basis today is -0.1%.

Baseline note — and read the direction of it, because it is the reverse of every day this week: today’s move is measured against our Oct 15 mark ($1,739.36), 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 three. Thursday’s official close was $1,781.31, 2.41% above our mark, because the tape rallied hard after we marked — Thursday was a V-shaped recovery and our mark was taken near the low of it. Measured from that close the book is -0.1% rather than +2.3% — so today the headline figure is the flattering one, and the close basis is what your own screen will agree with. We are saying so in the lead rather than letting a good-looking number stand. The Today column in the position table is on the our-mark basis so it ties to the headline; the vs-close reading is printed beside it. MSCI published its index decision after Thursday’s close and before this mark, so the reaction is already in these prices. 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 15 mark, with the vs-Thursday’s-close reading beneath it wherever the two differ. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Fri, 7:51 MDT, twenty-one minutes after the open); the daily move is vs Thursday's (Oct 15) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received. IMPORTANT AND THE REVERSE OF RECENT DAYS: Thursday's tape ROSE sharply after our mark -- the market staged a V-shaped recovery into the close -- so the move against our mark is LARGER and more flattering than the move against Thursday's official close. The close basis is the one your own screen agrees with, and today it is the harsher of the two. Both are printed, for the book and for every position. MSCI published its non-operating company decision after Thursday's close and before this mark, so the reaction is already in these prices. 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.

Calculate Your Position Size

Safe Growth is marked at $1,780 twenty-one minutes into the session, +2.3% against our Thursday mark and -0.1% against Thursday’s official close of $1,781.31. Read the direction of that gap before you read anything else, because it is the reverse of every day this week: the tape rose 2.41% after we marked yesterday, so today the headline is the flattering reading and your own screen will show this book essentially unchanged. The honest one-line summary of Safe Growth today is flat, not up two percent. October is -1.3% month to date against -3.5% yesterday, and the year is still negative at -7.3%. Yesterday’s update was emailed and texted, so there are two bases today rather than three.

Now the uncomfortable part, and it belongs at the top rather than buried at the bottom. We mark both books shortly after the open. Yesterday we marked at 9:31 Eastern, one minute after the open. Eight of this book’s ten positions set their Thursday low inside the first half hour of trading, and five of them — ETN, NVDA, URA, MSTR and NUGT — printed that low between 9:53 and 9:57 Eastern, in the twenty-odd minutes after we took our reading. So we did not catch the exact bottom; we marked into the opening plunge, the true lows came minutes later, and the market then staged a V-shaped recovery for the rest of the day. Safe Growth closed the day at $1,781.31, 2.41% above the figure we emailed and texted you. The mark itself was honest — it is a real price at a real time, taken the same way every morning — but the letter built on it described the worst few minutes of the day as though they were the day. Anyone who read yesterday’s update and felt worse about this portfolio was reacting to a number the market had already taken back by lunchtime. We are saying so plainly, because the alternative is that you work it out from your own statement and wonder why we did not mention it.

What turned Thursday around was one man answering one question. The sell-off that had run since Wednesday was about the financing of artificial intelligence rather than the demand for it — specifically CoreWeave, which borrows at roughly 9% to rent out compute at a return nearer 5%, and whose bonds we wrote about yesterday. Speaking in Stockholm on Thursday, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said he has no concern about CoreWeave’s financial health, that its cost of capital is falling rather than rising, and that Nvidia does not need to stand behind it. CoreWeave had been down more than a quarter on the week; it erased the day’s loss and closed up about 6%. The broad tape followed: the Dow added 1.1%, the Russell 2000 1.4%, and the equal-weighted S&P 500 1.4%, while the cap-weighted index merely halted a three-day slide. That is the whole of the afternoon our mark missed.

And this morning it is partly unwinding again, which is why we are not calling Thursday a bottom. CoreWeave is down more than 5% before the open on the same worry Mr Huang was answering, so the reprieve bought a session rather than a resolution. Treasury yields have ticked back up — the ten-year near 5.11% against about 5.09% at Thursday’s close, the thirty-year around 5.44% — which is a small give-back of Thursday’s flight to safety rather than a new move. Underneath it all sits Wednesday’s inflation print, with core CPI at 0.3% on the month against 0.2% expected and 2.6% on the year, and a market that has shifted from asking when rates get cut to accepting that they stay restrictive for longer. For a portfolio with a long-bond sleeve, that remains the central problem.

The position-level detail matters more than usual today, because four holdings read green on our basis and red on yours. Twelve of the fourteen positions across both books are higher and two are lower. Against our Thursday mark almost everything here is up; against Thursday’s close the book splits, and four positions flip sign between the two. XLE is -0.1% against our Thursday mark, +1.1% against Thursday’s close, ETN is +2.7% against our Thursday mark, -0.2% against Thursday’s close, NVDA is +0.8% against our Thursday mark, -0.7% against Thursday’s close, and the single MSTR share here is +4.6% against our Thursday mark, -5.2% against Thursday’s close on the MSCI decision discussed at length in the other letter. When our Today column and your screen disagree, your screen is the one measured from the official close. Both readings print in the table below, position by position, so you can check either.

What actually worked was the unglamorous half of the book. Measured from Thursday’s close — the harder test today — PPA is +1.3%, NUGT is +1.8%, XLE is +1.1% and EWW is +1.0%, while the four positions that touch the AI and rates complex gave a little back. Defense, energy, gold miners and Mexico are not why anyone gets excited about a portfolio, and they are precisely why this book is -7.3% on the year while the other one is -10.4%. TMF is -1.8% against our Thursday mark, -0.2% against Thursday’s close and is still -25.9% since entry — yesterday it was the best thing we owned, today it hands a fraction of that back, and neither day changes a thesis that has cost this book money all year.

Bottom line: Safe Growth is at $1,780 a unit — +2.3% against our Thursday mark, -0.1% against Thursday’s official close, -1.3% for October and -7.3% for the year. Read it as flat on the day. Nothing was traded and nothing is proposed: 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: MSCI’s decision on Strategy, which arrived last night and is covered in full in the High Risk letter — it touches the one MSTR share here and matters far more to the other book; whether the Treasury bid from Thursday holds or keeps unwinding; Bloom Energy and Nebius both reporting on October 22; the Federal Reserve on October 27–28; and the November 3 midterms.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Friday, October 16, 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.