Safe Growth

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 23 mark ($1,713.83). Friday’s update was emailed and texted, so this is also the last figure you received; there is no separate emitted basis today. Live marks (Mon, 8:05 MDT, 35 minutes after the open, 10:05 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 23 (Friday) published mark. Friday’s letter reached both your inbox and your phone, so the mark we published is also the figure you hold — two bases today, not three, and both print. The two books’ marks sat on opposite sides of Friday’s close, so the direction of the gap differs between them; each book states its own below. 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). Friday’s official close was $1,715.85 — 0.12% above our mark — so on the close basis today is 0.0%.

Baseline note — two numbers today, not three, and that is good news about us rather than about the market. Friday’s letter was emailed and texted, so the three-session run of updates that reached the website and never reached your inbox is over. The figure you hold is Friday’s $1,713.83, and it is also the mark we published, so there is no separate ‘last sent’ basis to reconcile. Harshest first, ordered by the numbers themselves rather than chosen. Measured from Friday’s official close of $1,715.85 — the basis your own brokerage screen uses it is 0.0%. Measured against our own Oct 23 published mark of $1,713.83 it is +0.1%. Read those two together and the honest word is flat. They straddle zero — one is marginally positive, one marginally negative, and the gap between them is 0.12%, which is the distance the book travelled between our Oct 23 mark and Friday’s closing bell. We are not going to quote you the positive one and call the day green. 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 23 mark, with the vs-Friday’s-close reading beneath it wherever the two differ. Since Entry = vs Jan 22, 2026. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Mon, 8:05 MDT, 35 minutes after the open, 10:05 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 23 (Friday) published mark. Friday’s letter reached both your inbox and your phone, so the mark we published is also the figure you hold — two bases today, not three, and both print. The two books’ marks sat on opposite sides of Friday’s close, so the direction of the gap differs between them; each book states its own below. 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 $1,715 35 minutes into the session, and the honest word for the day is flat. Two readings today rather than three, because Friday’s letter was emailed and texted — the run of three updates that reached the website and never reached your inbox is over, and we are not going to pretend that was anything other than our own failure. Against our Oct 23 published mark the book is +0.1%; against Friday’s official close of $1,715.85 it is 0.0%. Those two straddle zero. One is marginally positive, one marginally negative, and we are not going to quote you the positive one and call it a green day. Eight of the fourteen positions across both books are higher and six are lower. October is -4.8% month to date and the year is negative at -10.7%. That October figure deserves a line of its own: it is, on our published monthly table, the worst October this book has recorded — the previous worst was -3.3% in 2020. We checked it against every October in the table rather than asserting it.

One position did almost all of the damage, and it is the single share of Strategy. MSTR is -6.3% against our Friday mark, -5.0% against Friday’s close, and on the close basis it alone accounts for -0.42 percentage points of this book’s 0.0%. Hold that one share at its own close and leave everything else where it is, and Safe Growth is +0.4% today. It is 8.1% of this unit — a deliberately small sleeve — and the full argument about it sits in the High Risk letter, where it is 41% of that book. The short version, from Strategy’s own filing this morning: it bought no bitcoin at all last week, and bitcoin slipped below $80,000. Six of the ten holdings here are higher against the close; four are lower.

Energy rose while crude fell, and that is worth slowing down for because the easy sentence would have been wrong. Oil came off: the December WTI contract is $101.44 at our mark against Friday’s $103.27 settlement, down 1.77%, and December Brent is $115.53 against Friday’s $116.72, down 1.02%. Senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan travelled to Tehran today for de-escalation talks under Qatari and Pakistani mediation, and the market took some war premium out of the barrel even as Houthi attacks continued. And yet XLE is +1.7% against our Friday mark, +0.4% against Friday’s close, off a record close. We watched it happen rather than inferring it: XLE opened down 0.27%, was down 0.42% five minutes in, crossed back through Friday’s close at about 9:45 Eastern and was up 0.76% by 10:00 before settling where we marked it. So the honest description is an intraday reversal in energy equities against a lower barrel — not ‘oil up, energy up’. XLE remains the strongest long-run holding here at +42.3% since entry. One caution on those crude figures, because this is the third time this month we have had to give it. We quote the December contract on both days. The continuous Brent series rolled from December to January over this weekend: it printed $116.72 on Friday and $110.60 today, so a continuous Brent chart shows roughly a 5.2% fall that no actual barrel took. January Brent did not drop 5.2%; it is a different barrel. The real December move is the 1.02% above.

Defense was the best sector line in the book, and we are going to state the move without inventing a reason for it. PPA is +3.0% against our Friday mark, +1.1% against Friday’s close, and the gain is broad rather than one name: Lockheed Martin +2.38%, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman both +1.68%, General Dynamics +1.53% against Friday’s closes, with the unleveraged aerospace-and-defense ETF up 1.00%. The obvious story — Middle East escalation — actually points the other way today, because the news was diplomats meeting in Tehran and Gulf equity markets rallying on hopes of de-escalation. Interceptor demand does not fall the day talks begin, and Saudi Arabia has gone on intercepting missiles and drones through the month, so a bid for the missile-defense primes is not illogical. But we have not established a single catalyst, and we would rather tell you that than hand you a tidy explanation we cannot stand behind. ETN is +1.3% against our Friday mark, +0.5% against Friday’s close — at 21% of the unit the largest single position here. Eaton has issued no news; its third-quarter results are confirmed for November 3, before the New York open, with the call at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, which is also the day of the midterm elections.

The long end barely moved, and the Federal Reserve meets tomorrow. The ten-year yield is 4.970% at our mark against Friday’s 4.988% close — under two basis points — and the thirty-year 5.289% against 5.315%. That is why TMF is +0.6% against our Friday mark, +1.6% against Friday’s close: a small gain, on a small move, and not a thesis being vindicated. The meeting runs October 27–28 with the decision Wednesday afternoon, and the pricing has shifted since we last wrote to you about it. A hold is about 88–90% likely with a hike near 11%; December carries roughly a four-fifths chance of a hike, around 79%. When we printed these on October 19 they were 13% for October and 86% for December, so both have come in, but only slightly — the market has pushed the next move later without taking a hike this week off the table, and we are not going to round one-in-nine down to nothing. TMF is -20.9% since entry, which is the number that matters for it, and our review of replacing it is closed with no trade made.

Gold did not fall today — the miners did, and that distinction matters. Gold futures are essentially unchanged — marginally higher, up 0.10% — and the big bullion ETF is down 0.06%. The unleveraged gold-miners ETF is down 0.84%. So NUGT is -3.4% against our Friday mark, -1.4% against Friday’s close, which on the close basis is about 1.6 times the miners’ move — short of the two times the fund targets, because that multiple is built for a full close-to-close session and we are marking part-way through one. If you read ‘gold miners down’ and assume the metal sold off, you would have the day wrong: this is the equities underperforming a flat metal, with no company news in it and no change of view from us. It stays on WATCH at -56.2% since entry, the worst position in this book, and we are not going to dress that up.

The rest of the detail, both bases throughout. NVDA is +1.3% against our Friday mark, +1.8% against Friday’s close — the best line here on the close basis and still +16.2% since entry; the chip complex was strong today for a reason the other letter covers. URA is -0.7% against our Friday mark, -1.2% against Friday’s close and remains the second-weakest holding at -40.4% since entry. EWW is -0.5% against our Friday mark, -0.9% against Friday’s close and INDA is +0.3% against our Friday mark, +0.8% against Friday’s close — the two emerging-market sleeves pulling in opposite directions and barely moving, which is what they are here for. Where the two bases differ, the close-basis figure is the one your own statement is measured from.

Bottom line: Safe Growth is at $1,715 a unit, flat on the day — +0.1% against our own Oct 23 mark and 0.0% against Friday’s official close, two readings that straddle zero. October is -4.8%, the worst October in this book’s table, and the year is -10.7%. 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: the Federal Reserve on October 27–28, where the question is not this week’s decision but what it says about December; whether the Tehran talks turn into anything, since a genuine de-escalation would take more premium out of crude and the energy sleeve is the best-performing part of this book; Eaton’s third-quarter results on November 3 before the open, the first hard number on the largest position here and the same day as the midterms; and the MSCI affected-company list on November 11, which touches the one MSTR share held here.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Monday, October 26, 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.