Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 19 mark ($1,762.69). Monday’s update was emailed and texted, so this is also the last figure you received; there is no separate emitted basis today. Live marks (Tue, 7:42 MDT, twelve minutes after the open, 9:42 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 19 (Monday) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received — two bases today rather than three. The direction matters, so read it before the numbers: Monday’s tape kept falling after we marked at 10:01 Eastern, so Monday’s official close landed below our mark. That makes today’s headline, which is measured against our mark, the harsher of the two readings — your own screen measures from that official close and will look better than our number. Both readings are printed, for the book and for every position. October MTD is measured from Wednesday Sep 30’s official month-end close. October MTD vs Sep 30 close ($1,802.53). Monday’s official close was $1,754.02 — 0.49% below our mark — so on the close basis today is -1.0%.

Baseline note — and read the direction of it, because it is the same direction as the gap we described on Monday, not a reversal of it: today’s move is measured against our Oct 19 mark ($1,762.69), which is both the figure published on the website and the figure emailed and texted to you on Monday morning — the same number, so there are two bases today rather than three. Monday’s official close was $1,754.02, 0.49% below our mark, because the tape kept falling after we marked at 10:01 Eastern. Measured from that close the book is -1.0% rather than -1.5% — so today our headline is the harsher of the two readings, and your own screen, which measures from that official close, will look better than our number. We would rather lead with ours. Both print, for the book and for every position below. 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. 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 19 mark, with the vs-Monday’s-close reading beneath it wherever the two differ. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Tue, 7:42 MDT, twelve minutes after the open, 9:42 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 19 (Monday) published mark, which was also emailed and texted, so it is the same figure you received — two bases today rather than three. The direction matters, so read it before the numbers: Monday’s tape kept falling after we marked at 10:01 Eastern, so Monday’s official close landed below our mark. That makes today’s headline, which is measured against our mark, the harsher of the two readings — your own screen measures from that official close and will look better than our number. Both readings are printed, for the book and for every position. October MTD is measured 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 $1,736 twelve minutes into the session, -1.5% against our Oct 19 mark and -1.0% against Monday’s official close of $1,754.02. Read the direction of that gap before anything else, because it is the same direction as the gap we described on Monday, not a reversal of it: the tape kept falling 0.49% after we marked on Monday, so today our headline is again the harsher of the two readings and your own screen — which measures from that official close — will look better than our number. October is -3.7% month to date against -2.2% on Monday, and the year remains negative at -9.6%. Monday’s update was emailed and texted, so there are two bases today rather than three.

Something was released before we marked, and it is the reason the one green position in this book is green. September housing starts came in at 1.221 million annualised against roughly 1.30 million expected and 1.288 million in August; single-family starts fell 4.6% to 859,000 and single-family permits 4.0% to 845,000. That landed at 8:30 Eastern, about 72 minutes before our 9:42 Eastern mark, so the reaction is already inside the prices you are reading here rather than something still to come. Housing is the part of the economy that responds to the mortgage rate first and most, and a miss of that size is read as evidence the rate level is biting. The long end took the bid accordingly: the thirty-year fell about four basis points to 5.43% from Monday’s 5.47% and the ten-year three to 5.11% from 5.14%, with the five-year barely moved at 4.92%. We checked that against the instrument rather than inferring it from our own holding — the unleveraged long-bond ETF is up 0.87% and TMF, which is three times that exposure, is +0.9% against our Monday mark, +2.7% against Monday’s close, the best position in the book today. It stays on WATCH and it is still -25.3% since entry, which one good morning does not change.

The largest position in this book fell about four percent today on no company news at all, and that is worth explaining rather than skipping. ETN is -4.1% against our Monday mark, -3.7% against Monday’s close and it is the biggest single holding here at 22% of the unit. Eaton issued exactly one thing today: a financial-calendar notice that third-quarter results will be published on November 3, before the open, with the call at 11am Eastern. No warning, no guidance change, no management departure. What is happening instead is a rotation inside the theme rather than away from it — and the clearest evidence is that 3M was up 3.8% at our mark — and rose above 5% shortly afterwards — after disclosing an expanded agreement that names it a key supplier of optical connectivity and data-centre products to Amazon, including warrants over 3,162,015 of its shares at $164.89 that vest against $6 billion of cumulative payments. We should be straight about one thing rather than let that sit as cleaner evidence than it is: 3M also reported third-quarter results this morning, with adjusted earnings of $2.50 a share, up 12%, and a raised full-year outlook — so its move is a beat-and-raise as well as a contract, and we cannot hand the whole of it to the Amazon news. What we can say is the narrower thing: money did not leave data-centre electrical equipment today. For us the arithmetic is less comfortable: measured from price data rather than headlines, ETN fell 7.8% across the seven sessions into Monday and is 15.3% below its high this month. We are holding it, the rating is unchanged, and we will have actual numbers to judge on November 3.

One thing to keep straight while chips are falling: the problem is not that nobody wants the silicon. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have between them ordered more than three million of Nvidia’s RTX PRO 5500 cards — a deliberately export-compliant workstation part rather than a top-end data-centre processor — at a combined ticket above US$35 billion. Nvidia has told partners they may receive only 5% to 10% of what they asked for, because it can build no more than about three million of these cards globally in 2027 against Chinese orders already past six million. Demand is running at several times supply for the most restricted product in the line. NVDA is -1.0% against our Monday mark, -1.8% against Monday’s close and +15.3% since entry. The selloff running through the chip complex this month is a question about who funds the build-out and at what cost of capital, which is the subject of the High Risk letter today; it is not a question about order books. Those are different risks and they deserve different reactions.

Oil needs care this morning, because the headline number and the number we marked against are not the same, and there is a calendar trap underneath both. Brent ran to $111.71 at 5:35 Eastern on Middle East supply worries and had given most of that back by our mark, sitting at $109.86 — up just 0.3% on Monday’s close. November WTI touched $110.27 at 7:45 and was $105.92 at our mark, up 2.2%. So the overnight spike faded into the session, which is also why XLE is -1.0% against our Monday mark, -0.1% against Monday’s close rather than sharply higher; it remains this book’s best long-run holding at +38.5% since entry. The trap: the front-month WTI contract rolls from November to December today, and December trades near $99. A continuous WTI chart will therefore show roughly a five percent fall this morning — November closed Monday at $103.66 and December is near $99 — that is a contract change and not a price move at all. We mention it because several pre-market write-ups quoted WTI up 4.3% at $108.15, which was the overnight high of the expiring contract rather than where crude was when we measured. Gold is a little lower at about $4,137 against $4,160, so NUGT is -1.6% against our Monday mark, -0.3% against Monday’s close and also stays on WATCH at -48.3% since entry.

Three of the fourteen positions across both books are higher and eleven are lower. Against our Oct 19 mark and against Monday’s close the book reads differently, and when the two disagree your screen is the one measured from the official close. The rest of the detail: URA is -2.2% against our Monday mark, -1.4% against Monday’s close, PPA is -0.4% against our Monday mark, -0.4% against Monday’s close, EWW is +0.6% against our Monday mark, +0.1% against Monday’s close and INDA is +0.3% against our Monday mark, +0.5% against Monday’s close — the two emerging-market positions are the only other names holding their ground today, which is the diversification doing precisely the job it is held to do — and the single MSTR share here is -2.7% against our Monday mark, -0.6% against Monday’s close, which is the subject of the other letter and matters far more to that book than to this one. Both readings print position by position in the table below, so you can check either against your own statement.

Where this leaves the book, stated plainly. At $1,736 a unit Safe Growth is at its lowest mark since August 3 — we checked that against every session of 2026 rather than describing it from memory, and it is not a low for the year: the book traded below here on 31 sessions this year and its actual 2026 low is some way under today’s price. October is -3.7% and the year is -9.6%. The comparison that matters is with the other book: High Risk is -15.9% on the year and -20.6% for October against this book’s -3.7%, and the gap is not skill, it is spread. Ten positions across energy, infrastructure, defense, uranium, rates, gold miners and two emerging markets will not fall together in a week driven by the cost of capital for artificial intelligence, and this week they have not.

Bottom line: Safe Growth is at $1,736 a unit — -1.5% against our Oct 19 mark, -1.0% against Monday’s official close, -3.7% for October and -9.6% for the year. 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: whether the long end holds this bid now that housing has given it a reason, since TMF is the one position that needs it; whether the overnight oil strength returns or fades again, because this book owns both the energy upside and the rate consequences of expensive energy; Eaton’s third-quarter results on November 3, which is the first hard number on the largest position here; the Federal Reserve on October 27–28, where prediction markets priced a 13% chance of a hike when we checked this morning and fed funds futures have been in the mid-teens, quoted as market prices rather than our forecast; the MSCI affected-company list on November 11, which touches the one MSTR share here and is covered in full in the High Risk letter; and the midterms on November 3.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Tuesday, October 20, 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.