Weekly Performance Update & Current Selloff Views

Weekly Performance Update & Current Selloff Views

All right, everybody, welcome back to another weekend newsletter from The Simple Side. We’re gonna jump into our portfolio performance, all of our one-off stock bets, and we’ll talk a little bit about why the market dropped so much and if we should be worried. Let’s get into it… But before we do… Here is a quick breakdown of all the current offerings that Simple Side subscribers can indulge in. We offer a total of 2 alternatively managed portfolios, 3 managed portfolios, and a group of one-off stock picks. All of my personal investment capital is invested in all of these things I discuss, unless otherwise stated. Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) * The Perplexity AI Finance Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/737030?referrer=2943] * Portfolio managed entirely by Perplexity Finance, offered by The Simple Side on Autopilot. * The Insideredges.com Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/734049?referrer=2943] * Portfolio built by Insider Edges Premium Picks [https://www.insideredges.com/premium-picks/dashboard] and Monthly Picks [https://www.insideredges.com/monthly-picks] * 13-19 holdings * 10 from the premium picks portfolio and 3-9 from the monthly picks. Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) * The Flagship Fund [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/708098?referrer=2943] * Long-term holds (12-month rebalance) * Focused on quality growing companies * 15-25 holdings * The Tech Growth Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/713714?referrer=2943] * Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months) * Focused on disrupting high-growth names * Includes monthly picks * 15-20 holdings * The Second-Hand Effects Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/712633?referrer=2943] * Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months) * Focused on current trends, “picks and shovels.” * 15-20 holdings Other Offerings (Only Available Through This Newsletter) * One-off Researched Stock Bets [https://thesimpleside.news/research] * Individual stocks we invest in whenever we find good opportunities. Let’s quickly talk about our managed portfolios that we talk about and share with subscribers for free in the newsletter. The two portfolios that I’m gonna talk about here are available to copy trade on Autopilot. And like always, there’ll be links in the newsletter all over the place for you to go and find these portfolios on Autopilot to copy trade them. One of these portfolios is managed by Perplexity Finance [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/737030?referrer=2943]. The other one is insideredges.com [https://www.insideredges.com/], which is an insider trading, thirteen-F tracking, hedge fund tracking platform that’s available, and you guys can go and look at that and find that and use them and their stock picks if you so choose. Our quick discussion on the current market and if we should be worried is at the very bottom today… Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) Perplexity Finance [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/737030?referrer=2943] Let’s start with the Perplexity Finance portfolio that we’re managing. Currently, the portfolio has something like eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars of assets under management, and that’s spread across about a hundred different people. Year to date, the portfolio has been doing extremely well, up 28.78% percent, while the S&P five hundred over the same period of time has only averaged 7.96 percent returns. So pretty impressive returns there. And again, over the past three months, we’re up something like twenty percent, again, outperformance against the S&P five hundred. Over the past month, we’re up four point four eight percent, again, outperforming the S&P five hundred, which is only up one point nine percent. And then over the past week is where things started to get a little bit ugly. We’re down three percent, 3.06 percent to be exact, and the S&P five hundred over that same period of time is down two point five percent. So a little bit of underperformance, in the short term, but when you zoom out, when you look at the big picture, we’re outperforming by quite a vast margin there. And, we’re very happy to be sitting in that position with this portfolio. Now, if we want to talk stocks and the allocations that we’re seeing in this portfolio, it’s pretty cut and dry, pretty simple. Micron is the number one pick in the portfolio with a weighting of 7.36%. We’re up almost 280% on that stock. Google is sitting at the number two allocation, which is 7.28%… so, about 0.1% less than our Micron position. That’s up about 15%. And then in the number three position, this has been a relatively new one from Perplexity Finance over the past few weeks. It’s been growing in the position in XLU. That XLU stock is in the utility sector, and so it’s tracking the utility sector there. That’s a 7.21% weighting, and that’s down about 1.4%. So, I think if you look at the broader market downturn that we just recently saw, the large sell-off that we saw on Friday, especially, the XLU purchase starts to kind of make a little bit of sense. It’s looking for a little bit of stability while a lot of the other things in the market are on rocky ground. The next couple of stocks we have on the list are Amazon, Microsoft, UnitedHealth, Lam Research, and then we have a Schwab US dividend ETF. So those really make up about your top 10 picks there. Overall, as I said, performance has been very good. It’s well-to-do. New stock picks come out for Perplexity Finance every Monday morning. So if the AI decides with the information that I feed to it that it wants to make some sort of a change, it’ll let me know then. I’ll go in, I’ll make the change, I’ll make the adjustment, Then the portfolio will continue on. Again, the goal I think for this portfolio is just to have extended slow growth, looking for anywhere upwards of 8% to 10% returns per year. So a slight outperformance of the S&P 500 is what we’re going for. Recently, we’ve seen a large outperformance against the S&P 500. Hopefully, that continues, but only time will tell. InsiderEdges.com (Portfolio & Website) [https://www.insideredges.com/] The next managed portfolio that we have is the InsiderEdges.com portfolio. This is a newer one that I just started tracking on Autopilot, and that means that we don’t have as many subscribers or as many assets under management under this portfolio yet. But I think over time, and from what I’m gleaning from the InsiderEdges.com website, we should start to see this portfolio pick up and outperform over time, especially in bull markets. So we just started this portfolio, I want to say about three-ish months ago. So over the past three months, we’re up around 11.75%. Autopilot shows the returns a bit lower because it takes the aggregate return, not the actual return you would have experienced over that time period. Again, the S&P 500 was up over that same period of time, 8.25%. So outperformance there. Over the past month, we have been struggling down 2.55%, while the S&P 500 returns 1.9%. So we’re down a little bit under the S&P 500 over that same period of time. But over the past three months, again, zooming out at the bigger picture, we’re seeing some outperformance from the portfolio there. And then this past week, the portfolio just got smoked really hard, down 5.61%, while the S&P 500, as I said earlier, was down only 2.5%. So underperformance again over the past week should be no surprise, heavily indexed in tech, as many hedge funds and 13F investors are. So, of course, we’re going to see some negative performance, especially when we watch the Nasdaq take such a sharp fall. So the way InsiderEdges.com [https://www.insideredges.com/] portfolio works is we take all of their premium portfolio stock picks that are available to subscribers who use the website, and we put them into a portfolio, and we offer that portfolio for people to copy trade. Now, if you look back at the historical, I guess, rankings of the portfolio, we’ve seen the premium picks portfolio perform at about 17% per year, and we’ve seen the monthly picks portfolio perform at about 22% a year. So if you want to go and check any of that out, again, just go to InsiderEdges.com [https://www.insideredges.com/subscribe]. But we’ll talk about what their top positions are at the current moment. They currently have 14 positions. I think 4 of those are coming from the monthly picks portfolio. The other 10 are coming from the premium picks portfolio, and they’re allocated as follows. Microsoft is in the largest position by a pretty wide margin outside of the top three holdings. Allocation percentage is 16.17%. Current return since that stock’s been invested in is 4.2%. Amazon is in the number two position. Allocation is 15.19%. The current percent return on that holding is 2.4%. Then, at number three, the one that is lagging relative to these top, large holdings is Meta. Allocation is only 10%, so 5% less than the other two, and we’re down about 2.1% on that holding. Then I think the next couple of picks are where we start to get into more of the premium picks territory. Cloudflare, ticker NET, allocation 6.56%. We’re up 23.6% on that holding. Nat Terra, this is a pick from, I believe, Stanley Druckenmiller. Allocation is about 6.11%. We’re up around 10% on that pick. Of course, I’ll include a picture here so you guys can go and check out the rest of the stocks we hold and how they’ve been performing. In general, I think this portfolio is set to do well over time, especially in periods after we see stock market drops like what we’ve seen today. Of course, I wish we were going to get a bunch of 13F filings tomorrow so that I could go jump over to InsiderEdges, find all the important stock picks, invest in those companies, and then take that, run with it. Obviously, we don’t have those new filings coming out now, but we’ll be watching for those along with InsiderEdges at some point in the future. But for our managed portfolios that are kind of external to what we offer to paid subscribers on the newsletter, that’s all we have. We’re going to jump into the performance of some of these other actively managed portfolios that are under my care here in just a moment. But I wanted to share two portfolios that have actually been performing very, very well that you just can’t access really through the newsletter. You kind of need to be on Autopilot to be able to copy trade those portfolios. Of course, they’re included in the newsletter. You’re going to be getting these every week now. Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) The Flagship Fund [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/708098?referrer=2943] If you just want to know in general how things are performing, this section right here will be for you. We’re going to start, like always, with the flagship fund, which has kind of been my main investment vehicle for my own personal portfolio since about 2020. If you don’t know, it’s been averaging about 39%, really a 39% CAGR, compounded annual growth rate, per year, not including 2026. So it’s done very, very well. But I would like to say that there’s a huge caveat here, which is that we started in one of the greatest bull markets of all time. So we’ve been very lucky to pick up the performance that’s offered to us as well. I still do believe very strongly in the methodology that I have for finding stocks and putting them in my portfolio. I think the largest drawdown that we’ve seen has been 36%. So we’re willing and able to accept returns or downturns like that when we know that almost every year we’re going to be returning, anywhere from 30% to 40%. Now, I think that will decline as time goes on. I expect us to get closer and closer to the 20% returns per year. Which I would feel comfortable with if we could sustain that. But, regardless, let’s talk about some returns. One of the things that I’ve loved to say, and I’ll talk about it over and over, and over again, and sometimes I do it as a reminder for myself, is that we were really over-indexed into the software sector. I think, something like 60% or 70% of the holdings that we had in the portfolio were in the software sector, and they really didn’t fit the investment thesis that I have built for my personal investing journey, which is high-quality companies that have profitability, that are growing very fast. That’s what I like. I think it’s a very simple way to look at the market. You go, and you find a stock. The stock is doing very well. It’s got strong fundamentals. There’s not too much debt there. And you say, “Is this company growing?” The company is growing very quickly relative to many of the other companies that could potentially fit in the same vein, and then you say, “That’s the one I want.” And it just makes sense to me to say, “Here’s a company that has good management, that’s managing the company well, and it’s growing quite quickly.” It’s hard to look at a company like that and say, “This would not make a good investment.” As for the software sector, I think it’s harder to tell whether or not you have a quality business. There are so many legacy businesses that exist in the industry… I think I was sort of blindly taking these companies at face value, and I liked their margins and their growth more than I really liked the actual business model or the quality of the underlying business. A great example is Paycom. I was invested heavily in Paycom. We use Paycom in one of the businesses that I work with, and we don’t exactly like the way that it works. It’s not super customizable for things that we need. It’s pretty cookie-cutter. It works really well for many of the legacy brands and businesses that have been built on top of it. But I don’t really like the software. I don’t like the reporting, and yet I still invested in the stock. It just didn’t make much sense. When you do that, and 60% of your portfolio is built into companies like that, all of a sudden, you’re experiencing negative returns in a portfolio where you should be experiencing the opposite. So that’s a very long-winded way of going about what I was trying to say. Basically, if we had not made this software error at the beginning of the year, our portfolio would be up 14.52%. Now, sadly, we did invest in all of these software companies. We over-indexed in them, expecting high returns. It didn’t end up that way. So, year to date, our flagship fund is now only up around 5%. Obviously, this number will change if you’ve been investing in the portfolio over time, or DCA-ing, or anything of that nature. But for now, year to date, we are up about 5%. Over the past month, I think we’re up about 3.8%, and quite honestly, I feel like that’s not something worth complaining about at this point in time. Now, if you go and check the Autopilot page, I think it’ll tell you something a little bit different. It might say, like 1.5%, and that should, as far as I know, not be indicative of the returns that you should have from these companies. That’s the total aggregate performance. So some people might have bought sooner, some people might have bought into the portfolio later, and so the aggregate performance on Autopilot adjusts based on the total amount of capital that’s been put into the portfolio and how it’s performed. Over the past three months, we’re doing fair, I would say. We’re up about 8.41%. The S&P, again, is up 8.25%, so we’ve almost matched them. I believe that if you took away this negative performance on Friday, we were just starting to break away from the S&P 500. We were up about 14.33%, while the S&P 500 was up 11%. And we were starting to kind of pick up momentum in that growth as well. And we’ll talk more about what I think about the overall economy and portfolio sometime here in the future. Then, of course, like everything else over this past week, the flagship fund was smoked. I think going into Friday, the S&P was about even. I think it was about 0.08% returns in the S&P. Then the flagship fund, the poor flagship fund, we were up 3% going into this Friday. Then we ended the week, again, getting smoked along with the S&P, down 2.37%. Slightly above the performance of the S&P 500, but still struggling quite a bit. The Tech Growth Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/713714?referrer=2943] Now we get to talk about a more interesting one. That’s the tech growth portfolio, which I think you could absolutely say is the tech loss portfolio when the market does a downturn like it did this Friday. Yes, we absolutely, absolutely experienced that. Year to date in this portfolio, we have just been struggling. We cannot seem to get a foothold on the performance of the portfolio. We just seem to constantly have losses, even though I do believe we have some very strong holdings in the portfolio. They just haven’t really been able to find their footing. Year to date, let’s see what I have in performance. I have it sitting at around -5.9%. So down about 6% on the year. Of course, the performance that I just distaste so much. Of course, this is just another one of those portfolios where we had great momentum coming into this week. We’re starting to very, very quickly outperform the S&P 500. Then, of course, we saw this big sell-off. But that’s how a lot of high-growth portfolios work, and most people understand that. If you’re going for high growth, you’re typically picking up a lot of downside as well when the market turns. So let’s see what we’re looking at for returns over the past month. I’m showing an increase of about 3% over the past month. Again, at one point in time, we were showing 14.45%. And that was at the same time the S&P was experiencing 11.49%. Then, of course, the last couple of days of the week happened, and we just dropped off that cliff. Over the past month, the S&P 500 again ended at 1.9% returns, us ending -0.83% returns. Of course, a lot of that negative performance again came in the latter half of the week, where we just ended up underperforming by vast margins. Again, I really think as long as the current portfolio, or as long as the current investing environment stands, we’ll start to see outperformance in this portfolio in a big, big way. Our monthly picks this month are doing okay. There are some that are doing worse than others, but they’re doing relatively well. I just think that we’re close to seeing a breakout here. But when the market turns, we struggle. The Second-Hand Effects Portfolio [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/712633?referrer=2943] That struggle continued in one of our top-performing portfolios, the AI Secondhand Effects Portfolio. We’ve got around $900,000 invested in this portfolio. Year to date, we’ve seen pretty solid performance up anywhere, I think around 12%. 12% to 14% is the performance that we’ve seen year to date out of this portfolio. At times, been up as high as 28%. Then, of course, sell-offs over the past week have driven that number a little bit lower. But it’s nothing that we’re very concerned about. I think we have a lot of great investments with room to run in this portfolio, and I think we’ll see that happen over time. Over the past month, the AI Secondhand Effects Portfolio has struggled quite a bit, down about 6%. I think in Autopilot, you’ll see that we’re down around 10%. So that’s again client aggregate performance. So I think we’ve just had some unlucky bad buys go into the portfolio, making that performance look a little bit worse than it is. But over the past three months, it’s been nothing too terrible. We’re up about 4.49%, S&P 500 up 8.25%, and as I said, there have been times over the past three months, we’ve been up 17% against the S&P 500, 7%, or up 13% against the S&P 500’s 11%. So again, another one of those areas where we’re looking for high growth. We’re getting that high growth over the long term, but we’re experiencing a little bit of downturn, or I guess a lot of downturn when the market turns, which again, should really come as no surprise to anybody here. We did just recently make some transitioning investments in this portfolio, We are buying into a couple of companies that are not exactly energy-focused but are a little bit on the other side of things. We’ve made some investments in some more AI, quote-unquote, bottleneck companies here. So we’re kind of waiting to see how those play out. I think the drop-off this week gives us the opportunity to potentially go a bit deeper into some companies that we wanted to go into before, but were just a little bit worried about, putting big dollars in with things being so expensive. So there is an opportunity for us to change up some of the holdings here. I would like to see how things play out on Monday when the market opens because there is always, I think, this opportunity for things to open up lower, or even if they open up about flat, for us to kind of make those investments if we feel like it’s the right time. I’ve been watching how the portfolios have been performing on InsiderEdge of some of these large AI bet type guys. I think last week I saw Leopold Aschenbrenner. He runs the Situational Awareness hedge fund. He was up something like 20%, 16%, or 20% last week. Now this week I saw he’s only up 5.62% on just his equity holdings. So I think there’s something to say there about some of those opportunities maybe coming due. And then another guy that I kind of look to for some of these AI bets is Gavin Baker. He was up, I think, something similar, 16%, 17% last week. Now he’s only up 7%. So he’s got some interesting holdings that I do like quite a bit. Sienna Corp, being one of them, Micron, being one of them, Amazon, Nvidia, and then Astera Labs, ticker ALAB, is another one. He’s up about 47% on that pick since he reported his holdings. Just a few months ago. So those are things that I’m looking at as well. He’s also got holdings in companies like Coherent Corp, ticker COHR, Lumintium Holdings, I think that’s how you say that, it’s ticker LITE, and then EchoStar Corp, which has just been a huge one for some other investors over the past couple of years, ticker SATS. So those are some areas where I think there is potentially some opportunity to maybe look at or dive into. Another one he’s got Credo, CRDO, and he has a new buy in Apollo Alto Networks, ticker PANW, another one that’s interesting to me. So there’s a lot of opportunity that I see in some of these hedge fund portfolios that I’m really interested in potentially buying into. And now that we’re starting to kind of see these stocks retreat a little bit, I think this is where we’re getting an opportunity to maybe add into a couple of these companies that have had those sell-offs, so. Researched Stock Bets The last thing that we have to get into is our stock research. Of course, that’s able to be found on our website. It’s thesimpleside.news/research [https://thesimpleside.news/research], so you should be able to go to that website and see all of our stock research if you’re a paying subscriber. I think currently we’ve made a total of 25 picks, and I think 7 of those picks are still open. So what that means is we’ve got 18 that have closed, 18 picks that we have either manually closed the stock trade, or we have let the time that we expected the trade to take to expire, or anything of that nature, or we’ve hit our target expected price. So 18 of those trades have closed, and of those 18 closed trades, we have 14 winners, which means we only have 4 losers. We just recently had a couple of trades finish that just did very, very well for us. One of those was Oracle, ticker ORCL. This stock just did very, very well for us. We entered at a price of $151. We closed out the trade at a price of $210. That was a 38% return. The stock before that we closed out on May 19 was Hyperliquid Strategies, ticker PURR. We entered into the trade at $5.35. We closed out of that at $7.50. Now, I think both of these companies have more upside, and they might end up being trades that we go back into at some point here in the future. I didn’t expect them to do as well as they did, as fast as they did. And so we’ll look at trading back into those companies here soon, especially after the recent sell-off that we saw. I’m not sure exactly how well Oracle did or did not do. I want to say they dropped by something like 10%, and are down from their peak in June by something like 13%. So it kind of starts to look like an attractive opportunity again. As I said, we had something like 48% returns on that. If we had continued to hold the stock, we would have had a chance of looking at something closer to 60% or 70% returns. So there’s definitely more upside that I see there. But, TBD on exactly how or what those trades will look like when we get back into them. Back to those outstanding trades… Of those outstanding trades, a majority of them are actually in losing positions right now. I won’t talk about the tickers here. That’s for paying subscribers only. One of them is a major loser, down 54%. One of them, we’re expecting a 33% return, we’re up 16%. Another one, we’re expecting a 20% return, we’re up 5% there. And so I think if I closed out all the trades that we have right now, we would still have majority winners, and our win rate would still be above 50%, and our average return, I think, would still sit somewhere around the high teens, low twenties. So, looking quite good on all of those portfolios as well. Again, something for paying subscribers that they get access to. I think that’s really all that we have for you this week. MARKET COMMENTARY At least in regard to our portfolios, the performance, and some of our one-off stock bets that we’ve made. I do, however, real quick, want to quickly recap, sort of what we’ve seen happen at the end of this week, and just quickly comment on whether or not I think it’s going to be something larger or if I think it’s more of a short-term reversal in some of these stock prices. So we’re going to just quickly zoom out and look at the market, and everything that happened from a bit of a more holistic standpoint, which is something I think is very helpful, especially when you see market sell-offs just like this one. We have been climbing every single week for 9 weeks straight in the S&P 500. So a sell-off like this one should really, As far as I can tell, come as no surprise to nearly anybody. I do think it’s surprising how quickly we saw the Nasdaq sell-off. Probably one of the worst sell-offs we’ve seen since April of 2025. But when you look at the Dow, something with a lot less exposure to tech names, we only saw a 1.35% drop. Again, still one of the worst drops we’ve seen in the past couple of months, but not something violently drastic that would make me super, super worried. I think what we’re seeing is a lot of profit-taking. We’ve had a lot of stock surges, we’ve seen a lot of shifts in the Fed interest rates, and we’ve seen kind of like this increasing, increasing risk on activity. So you can’t blame anybody for wanting to take some of their money off the table, Especially when the no-risk assets like bonds are starting to increase their yields. I think that’s also one of the reasons why we’ve seen such a sell-off in Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the highest risk, highest reward asset that people could invest in, and so it made sense to take a lot of risk and get a lot of reward. But a huge issue arises when you stop getting that reward, and you continue to maintain that risk. I think what you’re seeing is people selling out of Bitcoin, and they probably were bringing their money into the market because the risk-reward ratio in Bitcoin was no longer viable relative to the stock market, relative to what we’re going to start seeing in treasuries if rates go up. So it puts you in this weird position where all of a sudden the Highest and best is no longer the highest or the best, and so you start to see this rotation. People, of course, are now starting to pick up on the fact that we’re probably going to see a hike in rates, which I don’t think should come as a surprise to anybody. We’ve had high inflation. We haven’t really dealt with it in any way, shape, or form. We’ve just kind of been sitting on it. And so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that those rates have the potential to be hiked. I think that chance is now sitting at a 43% level. I will say the one thing that’s making me feel like this sell-off is just kind of the market focusing on a couple of different things is the fact that we did see 172,000 jobs added in May. Of course, I think you have to watch for a revision here. Revisions are, in my opinion, almost always in the negative direction. But regardless, that should have been good news for the market. We should have seen stocks probably rise on that news. So again, surprising that we didn’t. Again, like I just referenced when talking about Bitcoin, the risk-reward is not there as much, so people are selling off. In the same but inverse, it goes for the treasury markets. When yields are going to go up, when yields are high, and you’re seeing a high-risk asset selloff (what we are seeing now). In my humble opinion, equity and crypto prices are going to remain depressed as capital flows from high-risk positions in the equities markets to lower risk positions in the bond markets where companies can pick up these new higher yields. My opinion now is not to be in a position of buying or selling. I hold about a quarter of my capital in cash equivalents at the moment, and I like that positioning. I think the recent drop isn’t enough to warrent buying, but we will be watching closely if the market continues to decline towards lossses beyond 10%. - ¢, Founder of The Simple Side No Investment Advice or Brokerage; Disclaimer. For the avoidance of doubt [https://www.lawinsider.com/clause/for-the-avoidance-of-doubt], The Simple Side does not provide investment, tax, or legal advice [https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/legal-advice]. As with any asset, the value [https://www.lawinsider.com/clause/the-value] of any asset class can go up or down and there can be a substantial risk [https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/substantial-risk] that you lose money buying, selling, holding, or investing in any asset. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding assets is suitable for you in light of your financial condition [https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/financial-condition]. This is a public episode. 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S&P 500 Trends & Interesting Stocks

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com [https://thesimpleside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] Thanks to [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=879460moxnqn5k&tid=340&s1=v2-r704841-p879460-c46016&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null]hear.com [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=879460moxnqn5k&tid=340&s1=v2-r704841-p879460-c46016&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null] for sponsoring this article [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=879460moxnqn5k&tid=340&s1=v2-r704841-p879460-c46016&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null]! [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=879460moxnqn5k&tid=340&s1=v2-r704841-p879460-c46016&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null] What a year this has been, and what an insane past few weeks… The market has been in an oil CRAZE, and it seems that despite the worry of the oil markets, despite the overvaluation of the markets, despite the insane debt levels of the US government, despite it all… the money printer that is the United States stock market has pushed forth to higher and higher levels. Year-to-date, the stock market has risen nearly 8% — a figure I honestly thought was near impossible. Since 1993, the SPY has averaged an 8.65% CAGR, with relatively few major drawbacks. The following graph represents the market’s CAGR as it changes throughout the years from 1993 to 2026. Make a note that nearly anytime we see a dip in the graph, the market is offering an incredible buying opportunity. It should come as no surprise that in recent years, CAGR has made massive jumps. Since 2023, the market CAGR has been 17.85%, and assuming positive returns through the end of 2026, we will be looking at the fourth consecutive year of gains. Since 1993, the market has seen more than 3 years of straight gains for more then 4 months in a row only 3 times. Once from 1995 - 1999 (5 years), another time from 2003 - 2007 (5 years), and now from 2023 - 2026 (4 years). I am sure I don’t need to remind you what happened in the years following those great market runs ending in 2000 and 2008. One thing I do think is important to mention, however, is the returns that we have been experiencing these past few years relative to the most similar bubble. Before the Dot Com bubble that occurred in 2000, the average returns were 26%, while the current average returns are 18%. Now, I am not saying that before any kind of market downturn, we need to average 26% returns, but I did just want to show that the market still does have room to run relative to what we have seen historically. One of the largest differences we have now, relative to the 2000’s crash, is real earnings growth. Companies are truly seeing earnings growth, and we know that earnings growth typically translates into growth in the S&P 500. We can also look at the two (earnings growth and SPY growth) on the same chart, and get a similar depiction. Again, here you can see that things track quite similarly along with one another. When there is an increase in earnings, the SPY tends to see an increase in the price of shares. I wanted to share all of this information for two reasons. * The market doesn’t go up and to the right for infinity. There has to be a reason for the market’s value to increase. * We are approaching levels of growth that have historically pointed to following declines. This week, I just wanted to look at some quick, super generalized trends we are seeing just with the S&P 500 relative to recent events and how substantially different they are from normal. I also wanted to note the fact that even though we are extremely far away from normal, we are also very far away from the insanity that we had in the 2000s. I know that the mainstream media makes it feel so deeply that the world is falling apart, but the reality is that we are still okay. Yes, the world is crazy, and the market is volatile, but overall, the market’s momentum is positive, and earnings keep proving the growth in the S&P isn’t nonsensical. Now I want to get into my portfolios and some potential research bets later this week. For now, I want to get into and share the current stocks we are invested in. We have had relatively solid performance on these picks to date (as is seen on our website https://thesimpleside.news/research [https://thesimpleside.news/research] for paid subscribers). I just wanted to share all of the current bets as well that exist outside of the portfolios.

Special Situation Stock Investing | Two Picks

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com [https://thesimpleside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] Thanks to [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=871123molhzq52&tid=321&s1=v2-r699316-p871123-c43109&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null]VantagePoint [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=871123molhzq52&tid=321&s1=v2-r699316-p871123-c43109&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null] for sponsoring this article [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=871123molhzq52&tid=321&s1=v2-r699316-p871123-c43109&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null]! [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=871123molhzq52&tid=321&s1=v2-r699316-p871123-c43109&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null] This is going to be one for the paying subscribers. Today, I am going to skip talking about the news, and instead, we are going to take a look at two investments I have made. We also have new stock picks for our monthly investments, and coming this week, we will be discussing some of the new stock picks from InsiderEdges.com [https://www.insideredges.com/]. There is a ton of value in today’s newsletter. I will try to send out some synopses on all of these investments over the next few weeks. It will help to have some more concentrated looks at each of these investments. One of the companies is a stock we already own, and I am going to be revisiting the valuation thesis (this is Stock 2). For stock two, I am expecting an initial jump in stock price to occur within the next 60-90 days, assuming no major changes in the thesis. The full stock returns will be realized over multiple quarters and will come after cash flows remain steady. The payoff timeline for stock 1 is not as exact as the other investment. We know that the deal we are investing in is expected to close in the latter half of 2026. So, I suppose this will be a 90 to 120-day payoff timeline. Here is a quick synopsis of the investments: Stock 1Returns: 33%Timeline: 90-120 days Stock 2Returns: 308%Timeline: >1 year** *Caveat that this investment should see an initial bump within the next 60-90 days based on my analysis (nothing is guaranteed). For those of you wondering what you are missing, I want to offer up an example. When the Strait of Hormuz started topping headlines all across the globe a few months ago, we decided that we needed to buy some portfolio insurance. We were sitting at nearly a 50% cash position, looking for potential investments to help offset losses we thought were coming, thanks to idle oil tankers. One of those stocks we decided to go long in was CVE (Cenovus Energy). We posted about the company on March 9, and cited two main reasons for the purchase. * Rising oil prices meant higher revenues and, therefore, higher stock prices. * A hedge against our current portfolios, which are heavily invested in higher-risk, AI-adjacent equities. Oil averaged a price of $69 a barrel in 2025, and at that value, CVE generated $38,239M in revenue. At the end of 2025, CVE was worth about $17.53 a share, and with 1,883M shares outstanding. We calculated the market cap at that time to be about $33,008M. Let’s call this a 1:1 valuation (even though the actual ratio is about .86). So, we can value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues. Now, let’s assume that all of their revenue was being generated by oil. That means they made $38,239M in revenue, divided by $69 per barrel, equals about 554M barrels of oil. Those same 554M barrels of oil, valued at $100 per barrel, would bring revenue up to $55,400M. Now, if we value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues, that means the market cap would be $55,400. Divided by the same number of shares outstanding: 1,883M, we end up with a per share value of $29.42. This is a projected 62% return for CVE in just 1 year. That model also assumes no growth and includes none of the “speculation money” that would flow into the stock over that timeline, either. Regardless, we adjusted this return for the potential for speculative capital, solved for the company already being undervalued, and ended up with a final potential annual return of 80%. We then figured that if oil was to stay at a value of $100 for just a quarter, we could see returns of 20% in just that time frame, and we made our bet on CVE at a value of 23.54. Just 21 short days later, we closed out the trade with a 20% profit on March 30 at a value of $27.44. *Please note that in this analysis, I made a ton of assumptions that are not necessarily true, but I wanted to show the general methodology that led me to make this stock pick. Without any further ado, let’s talk about our new investments!

Black Gold Runs The World (and the stock market)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com [https://thesimpleside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] Enjoy this article thanks to Constant Contact! [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=777027mnaxiwlc&tid=312&s1=v2-r672609-p777027-c42106&s2=The%20Simple%20Side&s3=&s4=null] Reminders: Copy Trading Here [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943]Portfolio Views Here [https://thesimpleside.news/portfolios]Macro Indicators Here [https://thesimpleside.news/macro-indicators]Research Reports Here [https://thesimpleside.news/research] Insider Trading & Hedge Fund Reporting: Found at InsiderEdges.com [https://www.insideredges.com/] Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. If you want to get a quick overview of the current happenings in the oil market, I would go read last week’s newsletter (or listen to it). I would also strongly recommend that you go listen to anything from Doomberg. He is one of the top energy market analysts and is the person (group) that I turn to when the energy markets are having their moment. Doomberg was one of the first people to get me into my SMR investments. The most recent podcast I have seen from him is this one. Between those two articles, you should be able to catch up on the world of oil and the current state of the oil economy. If you have been following my recent oil bets over the past few weeks, then you know that we have made 3 main bets and they have returned 12%, 13%, and 10% just in the past week. You can find all of those picks I made in last week's newsletter, and I will include them in this week’s with some updates on performance. Let me quickly give my opinions on the upcoming market movements and the current state of the market. My opinions from last week remain. In 18 months, oil will be lower than it is today. If you wanted hard numbers, I would say that oil will be down below $90, and likely below $80 a barrel. With that being said, I think we are absolutely on the verge of an energy crisis; however, I do not think that the US is going to be affected as adversely as people think. Here is a quick quote on energy consumption in the US: The United States consumes approximately 20–20.5 million barrels of petroleum products per day as of 2023-2024, representing about 20% of global consumption.- https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6 Here is a quick quote on the energy production in the US: U.S. crude oil production is at record levels, averaging approximately 13.4 to 13.6 million barrels per day (b/d) as of early 2026. The U.S. is the world's top producer, with total petroleum production (including natural gas liquids) exceeding 21 million b/d.- https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press577.php So, the key thing to note here is that we are seeing production and consumption in the US that are nearly equal. We do not have to export what we have; we are self-sufficient in the oil markets, and if we need to, we can turn off the export machine and keep our oil internal. This means that we will not see oil restrictions at the pump, but the prices could remain elevated for longer. One of the trades that I would love to scream about from the rooftops right now is buying natural gas. Oil and natural gas have a long-term correlation, and with natural gas so low right now, the argument could be made that going long natural gas would be beneficial. The one issue I have with that trade is the fact that when we drill for oil, we typically end up with natural gas as well. Modern techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling can extract both from the same well, and operators are likely to focus on the higher-priced petroleum products in the short term. This actually puts negative pressure on the price of natural gas in the short term, bringing prices even lower. The natural gas trade is coming, but has yet to arrive fully in my eyes. If we see natural gas futures get pushed down below $2 (or even lower), then we could have some extremely large upside opportunities over the long run. For now, the best trades to make are long oil (like we have done) and neutral on nat gas. The rest of the market will continue to decline until we see the newest American war start to shut down. Again, we are about 50% invested in our portfolios, and 25% invested in these oil bets on the side, and we can take this additional 25% in cash and push further into these one-off oil bets if we see further upside (helping to offset the portfolio losses further). Quick Comments I am still 50% invested in my portfolios. These are the same ones you can copy trade on Autopilot (The Flagship, AI Second-Hand, and Tech Growth) portoflios. About 25% of my portfolio is uninvested and is returning 3.25-3.75% returns in HYSAs, treasuries, and other “cash equivalent” positions. The final 25% is currently invested across 3 main oil names and 1 additional crypto bet (with small allocations to others). Please note that these are available to paying subscribers. I will be sure to discuss these directly below for pro members. This year, the portfolios are struggling (no surprise here, as the whole market is); however, the other 50% is what is keeping our returns stabilized. My current investments are down about 10% YTD for all of the portfolios. In comparison to the -7% we are seeing in the SPY, I am not upset in the slightest about these returns. I still think we own some of the top-quality companies available to investors in the US! The 25% cash position is up something like 0.8%. The 25% we own in one-off bets is up about 10% on average. Portoflios (50%): -10% Cash (25%): +.8% One-off (25%): 10% Overall portoflio (100%): -2.5% YTD Overall, having a loss of 2.5% while the market struggles and sits at losses over 7%, I can’t be too sad. I think there are a lot of investors who are struggling much worse than I am right now. As an important note, I think we have some extreme upside in those one-off bets we have made, and we will see the portfolio turn green in the coming weeks as oil prices remain at their higher-than-normal levels. Between all of our oil bets, I can see a +30% upside possible (on average). **Final note: these are my personal opinions and investments and are in no way, shape, or form am I acting as a financial advisor for you or your portfolios. If you want to take a 100% position in the oil bets, if you want to take a 50% position or a 1% position, it does not matter to me. You do not, nor should you, copy my exact portfolios or positions. The “monthly picks” that I made have been faring the storm relatively well. They are down only .34% this month. We will be closing these trades on Tuesday, and we will then be opening April’s trades the following day (April 1st). We currently have 2 monthly stock picks in the works for next month. With all of that being said, I would love to hear from you all how you would like to see all of these different research articles and stock portfolios presented. I have thought about building a sort of heatmap for all of these, but I don’t know what would be best for you all. I like the website, but I think we can do better… As a further note, this is everything we offer to subscribers: * Portfolios * Flagship fund * AI Second Hand Effects * Tech Growth * Other * One-off Research * Macro Allocations * Monthly Stock Picks * Weekly Stock Picks * Hedge Fund Portfolio * Coming Soon in partnership with InsiderEdges Quick Updates (Current Bets)

Oil, Oil, Oil | Everyone Freak Out The World Is Ending (kidding, we are fine)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com [https://thesimpleside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] Enjoy this article thanks to Groundfloor! [https://api.wellput.io/v1/cm?cmid=738976mmggi5ud&tid=333&s1=v2-r666506-p738976-c44486&s2=The%20Simple%20Side%20Daily&s3=&s4=null] (if you are looking for a solid place to keep your “cash” this is it — again sponsored but I love what they do). We have a few questions this week about our investments that I wanted to answer: Question about stop losses on weekly picks: Manual stop losses, we wait and see if things cross below 1% and then we kind of watch for a few mins. If the stock just immediately plumets then it is a sell right away, if not we hold for about 10 mins and then sell. Question on our portfolios: You can find all of the stock we invest in here: https://thesimpleside.news/ [https://thesimpleside.news/] — we have a portfolios page, a research page, and a weekly picks page as well. All of these have available data for you! Reach out to me directly at thesimplesidenews@gmail.com if you have further questions or use that button below. Reminders: Copy Trading Here [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943]Portfolio Views Here [https://thesimpleside.news/portfolios]Macro Indicators Here [https://thesimpleside.news/macro-indicators]Research Reports Here [https://thesimpleside.news/research] Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. Current Economic Views Oil, oil, oil. Really, that is the main and only thing driving the markets right now. If you are not up to speed on the oil happenings right now, I want to quickly update you. If you are up to speed, but you want a quick synopsis, this would be a great place to start. The current big issue is the Strait of Hormuz, which has been in a strict lockdown since the issues with Iran started. Currently, the strait has been deemed the “world’s most expensive parking lot” since nearly all ships (on either side) are held up and unable to pass through. The picture below is taken from marinetraffic.com and shows all of the ships stopped on either side of the strait. The average amount of oil that flows through the strait daily is about 20 million barrels of oil (and other crude products). This represents about 20% of the global consumption and nearly 25% of all seaborne oil (as reported by the BBC). The “war” has been going on for about 22 days now, which means about 440 million barrels of oil have been unable to move over that duration. In general, this seems like a drop in the bucket when you know that the total oil use annually is over 37 billion barrels; however, if you annualize the average daily amount of oil that passes through the strait, you end up with over 7.3 billion barrels cut from the world’s supply (this is about 20% as we noted earlier). This matters a ton for a few reasons, but the main one is the inelastic demand that the world has for oil — in other words, regardless of the price of oil, the demand remains relatively the same. This means, regardless of whether oil is $2.50 at the pump or $4.50 at the pump, the amount that people drive tends to remain about the same. This means that oil suppliers end up making tons more profits because they sell about the same amount of oil for much higher prices. The final important note is that when oil goes up, so does basically everything else. That is why when we look at the sector performance of all the S&P 500 industries, we see this over the past week: Now, the main issue causing oil to remain elevated for an extended period is Iran’s unwillingness to back down at the current moment. This is forcing Trump to remain involved and is almost entirely decreasing the “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) ability. So, what exactly does this mean? Should we start going long oil? Should we start shorting oil? You will hear a ton of “self-proclaimed investment gurus” throwing opinions and commentary out there like they have been in the oil business for years… my recommendation? DO NOT LISTEN. I just recently saw a large publication on Substack tell their subscribers to short oil and go long gold… that is potentially the worst advice I have ever heard, and if anyone followed this advice, they are in a world of hurt right now. I do not have any direct recommendations like that, but I can tell you what we are currently doing. Since we have been sitting on nearly 50% cash positions, we have executed some trades (deploying about 20-30% of our cash) in some undervalued names, a few in the oil/energy space, and a few other undervalued names in other sectors. I love this positioning. When oil spikes, there is almost always a risk for a black swan event to occur (something out of the ordinary) that causes a drastic fall in prices, and I do not want to be caught with my pants down if that were to happen. I think the one-off bets we have in the oil space will help secure upside while other names in the portfolio fall. On the other hand, if a black swan event occurs and oil comes crashing down, the 50% positions we hold in our portfolios will negate the potential crashes in our oil bets. Currently, I think we are going to see the war remain at a standstill, and we will see $80+ oil through the end of the month at least. Iran really doesn’t have a reason to back down — yet — and I am sure they are aware of the previous TACO moves Trump has pulled with countries in the past. Again, I say, I like where we are. Current portfolio composition is the following: Portfolios: 50% Individual Bets: 25% (this is between 20-30% right now).Cash/Equivalents: 25% In this current setup, we have minimal exposure to high upside oil/gas investments and a medium exposure to lower-risk quality businesses in our portfolios. This is always the way we have wanted our barbell-centric portfolio to operate. Low-risk ideas on one side, high-risk bets on the other. It has served us well in the past and is serving us well now. One more key thing about oil: over the next 18 months, I can almost guarantee you that oil prices will be lower than they are right now. Yes, quote me on it. One Final Thought (*IMPORTANT*) The current price of oil is a black swan event. Something that only happens once in a blue moon, and there is always something big that happens after moments like this… Everyone starts to focus extremely hard on the cause of the black swan event and how to fix it. So, what does that mean for the current oil craze? When this event ends, everyone in the US is going to start talking about our reliance on external energy, and everyone will ask, “How can we reduce this reliance?” This is going to put alternative energy back into a bull cycle, and the additional tailwind of AI energy demand will bring energy stocks to unprecedented levels. This will not happen overnight! We will probably see a 2-3 year bullish investment cycle into alternative energy (specifically related to natural gas and uranium). We will likely also see huge investments into infrastructure (energy-related) in the US, as well. This bodes extremely well for our AI Second Hand Effects portfolio. [https://marketplace.joinautopilot.com/landing/2943/712633] All Current One-Off Bets We currently have about 25% of our available cash balance invested in some one-off investments. Those names are as follows: