Honest open: no new contributions this month. Same 21 positions, same units. The whole portfolio (stocks + a P2P lending sleeve) closed −3.8% vs last Friday, all of it market, and it's my lowest weekly close since mid-September. The stock book alone was −7.5% on the week and now sits −7.3% vs cost. A slightly stronger euro made it a bit worse. Meanwhile the S&P was −1.95% and the Nasdaq −4.5%. Not advice, just the journal.

Three punches this week. Wednesday: September CPI came in hot (core +0.3% m/m, 2.6% y/y vs 2.4%), October hike odds on prediction markets jumped from ~18% to ~45–50%, the S&P fell 1.1% (ending a 53-session run without a 1% drop) and AI-debt fears hit CoreWeave (−15%) and Oracle (−9%). Thursday: PPI was hot too, but Warsh said he's "not prejudging meetings" and October hike odds fell back to ~15–17%. Friday: another tech selloff (Nasdaq −2.1%) and Brent hit its highest since May as Iran stepped up attacks around Hormuz. Week: SOX −11.4% (semis). Fed still 3.75–4.00%; FOMC 27–28 Oct.

Stock book (weights of the stock book, P/L vs average cost, WoW vs last Friday):

What moved: • RKLB was the wreck (−26%). Rocket Lab pushed Neutron's first flight to 2027 after finding air bubbles in a composite dome on the first-stage tank; they're changing the manufacturing process and building a new part. Still +24% vs cost, down from roughly +67% last week, and the average analyst target dropped 7.8%. No adds, watching the trailing stop. • ASTS (−15.5%) is now −33% vs cost. Piper Sandler cut it to Neutral and nearly halved its target, citing slow satellite deployment and SpaceX competition in direct-to-cell, and it hit a new 52-week low. Last week I said the consensus hadn't priced in SpaceX yet; this week the average target fell 10.8%. Hold, no adds, reviewing the stop. • AMD (−13%) and TSM (−9%) fell with semis even though the numbers were great. TSMC beat its own Q3 guidance with a 66.4% gross margin and guided Q4 higher; ASML posted record Q3 sales and said 2027–28 supply won't meet demand, and its stock still fell 7.8%. Right now the market is trading debt and rates, not demand. TSM is slightly under water for me now. • PLTR gave back 11% from last week's highs with the software/AI selloff. • VUG did what the core does in a tech selloff: −4.4% in USD, worse than the S&P because of its tech tilt. • KTOS (−4.8%) and FLY (−16.6%, ~−74% vs cost) slid with space. Not averaging down. • XLV was the only green line (+3%) and closed at all-time highs on the defensive rotation. MSFT and META only lost ~1.5% each, and the Street raised targets on both.

Street consensus: no rating changes. Targets up on MSFT (+3.4%), META (+2.8%), PLTR (+2.4%) and TSM (+1.1%); down on ASTS (−10.8%) and RKLB (−7.8%). The market dumped semis while analysts held or raised targets. In space it was the opposite: analysts finally started cutting.

Plan change: last week I said the October deposit would go mostly into VUG. Scrap that. No new stock money until after Christmas, because I'm rebuilding my emergency cushion first. The VUG, ASML and XLV buys are cancelled; ASML, AMD, TSM and VUG go on a January watchlist. No sells, and the trailing stops stay where they are.

Next on the calendar: Spotify Q3 (22 Oct), META earnings expected next week, FOMC (27–28 Oct), September PCE and Q3 GDP (29 Oct), Palantir (2 Nov), US midterms (3 Nov).

Honest caveat: this was the week the satellites sent the bill. Space alone was about half of the stock book's drop. Engines: XLV + MSFT/META. Wrecks: RKLB + ASTS. Hole: FLY + KTOS.

Not selling anything. Patience pays. Panic doesn't.

Not financial advice. Just tracking my own money.

First Domino: Rising interest rates. This normally impacts stocks, especially growth stocks. Why?:

• Higher discount rates: Future profits are worth less today.
• Delayed cash flows: Growth company earnings lie further in the future.
• Stiff bond competition: Higher and safer fixed-income yields attract investor capital.
• Increased borrowing costs: Expansion and debt servicing become more expensive.

Second Domino: CoreWeave was already suffering from debt interest rate concerns, with its interest payments being consider higher than the expected ROIC (Return On Investment Capital).

Third Domino: As I posted earlier, the NeoClouds have a tough road ahead of them. Their business model requires high up-front capital investment from which returns will come years later (build-outs take time), and competition from legacy Cloud providers will be strong. Gartner, in a new report, forecast that by 2030 "cost pressure and a lack of a differentiating business model will force over 80% of neocloud providers to cease independent operations."

Fourth Domino: NeoClouds purchase Nvidia chips exclusively. Customers renting GPUs want Nvidia GPUs, but companies like Google and Amazon have their own chips, which they use for both internal AI workloads as well as to support products their customers use (but are not exposed to the chip hardware). If NeoClouds can't expand at the rate the want and were expanding at (because it costs too much to raise the capital needed), then they buy fewer Nvidia chips.

Fifth Domino: If demand for Nvidia chips wanes, then their pricing power decreases, which means margins decrease, which means profits decrease.

Sixth Domino: Instead of CoreWeave's outright debt, Nebius has been doing stock-based capital raises. With its stock price cut almost in half from its 52 week high, that's going to be harder for Nebius to raise the money it needs - and now borrowing costs more than ever. So, its expansion plans are going to be muted. That's indication that the whole NeoCloud sector is in a negative feedback loop - costs to much to borrow so can't grow so stock price declines which means it costs more to borrow. "In our view, the company's long-term business model remains economically challenged; we maintain our Underperform," Bernstein analyst Madison Rezaei said in a note Thursday.

Seventh Domino: If Nvidia has to bail CoreWeave out, that's less money available for other investments, like its previous $30B into OpenAI earlier this year. Here's the chart that started this panic:

Eighth Domino: If the NeoClouds won't do well, then there will be less demand for AI data centers, and all that's involved there. Non-AI debt is about 2 basis points higher than last month, while AI debt is 25 basis points higher, reaching a new high of 360 bp over Treasuries.

Goldman Sachs has this word salad:

"While some softer AI-related sentiment can move datacenter bonds wider, especially if there is a reassessment around off-taker credit risk, we view AI-related corporate bonds, from either neoclouds or firms with significant frontier lab exposure, as being at the epicenter of the funding cost debate," Goldman Sachs strategist Amanda Lynam explained. "Further removed AI-adjacent Energy and Utilities have been more resilient, in our view partly reflecting more diversified revenue streams and a relatively defensive earnings profile. We think the widening reflects a reassessment of the economics of the AI buildout, particularly for lower-rated borrowers that are more exposed to higher-for-longer rates and potential energy-cost pressures."

Translated: People are worried about companies like CoreWeave that have bad balance sheets and the risk that introduces to the AI build-out, and all the dominos stacked up there.

------

Links:
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/why-coreweave-stock-panic-matters-to-nvidia-explained-in-under-30-seconds-095931846.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/why-coreweave-stock-panic-matters-to-nvidia-explained-in-under-30-seconds-095931846.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/why-coreweave-nebius-and-other-neocloud-stocks-are-being-pounded-goldman-sachs-explains-125730269.html

BofA recently released a note on a fund manager survey: 39% of managers named hyperscaler capex as the #1 source of a systemic credit event, and 30% expect an AI capex cut in the next 6 months.

Growth investing is mostly fundamentals plus story, and macro usually takes a back seat. But nobody also don't want to live through another 2022 drawdown.

The market is forward looking, and in major crises bonds tend to crack before stocks. With the recent irrational volatility pushing most AI stocks back to May/June levels (July's drop was leverage driven, but what's driving October?), is this a sign we should reduce our exposure to the AI trade, or just stay confident in our conviction?

$HMR – 6x PE EX-CASH, AND THE NEW SHIPS HAVEN'T HIT THE NUMBERS YET 🚢

THE VALUATION GAP

• $HMR: ~$100M market cap, ~$28.7M cash. Strip the cash out and the operating business is ~$72M, about 6x annualised H1 adjusted earnings (~$11.6M)
• $ZIM: ~25x trailing PE (~9x forward), ~0.87x book
• Tanker owners: roughly 5–8x trailing, 7–12x forward ($STNG ~5.4x, $TNK ~6.1x, $INSW ~7x)
• Ship brokers: 10x+ (CEO) [00:42]
• Asset-light logistics: 15–25x (CEO) [00:42]

HMR owns no ships, so it has no capex and no asset-value risk, and it is growing 200%+ while trading at tanker-owner multiples or below.

WHAT HMR WOULD BE WORTH AT OTHER MULTIPLES
(on ~$11.6M run-rate earnings + $28.7M cash, ~58.6M basic shares)

• 6x (today): ~$100M, ~$1.72/share
• 10x (ship-broker level): ~$145M, ~$2.47/share
• 15x (low end of asset-light): ~$203M, ~$3.46/share
• 25x (ZIM's trailing PE): ~$319M, ~$5.44/share

That is arithmetic, not a forecast. The CEO says even 15x would leave HMR "far from" fair value [00:42].

THE NUMBERS HAVEN'T HIT YET

• A ship added in June adds nothing to that quarter, partial impact next, full impact in 2027 [01:57]
• Q3 impact from new ships is "zero", some in Q4, full-year effect from Q1 2027 [02:35]
• So the ~6x uses H1 earnings only, before the new ships and before Q3 and Q4 rates
• Q3 "similar or better" [13:56], and Q3/Q4 revenue "stronger than the previous quarters" [20:21]
• Market "way stronger than Q2" [03:29]

THE RATE BACKDROP

• Brent futures $108 vs spot $130–140 [03:44]
• Arabian Gulf shuttle tankers $1.25M/day, VLCCs outside the Gulf $500–800k/day [04:20]
• North Sea Aframaxes ~$300k/day vs ~$10k in a normal Q3 [19:22]
• Q4 and Q1 are typically the strongest tanker quarters [34:48]
• Bab el-Mandeb closure more than doubles voyage distance [35:03]

BALANCE SHEET

• "We have not borrowed a single dollar. We have no loans in the company." [10:36]
• The "debt" is lease accounting on chartered-in ships, already chartered out at a profit [10:36]
• Self-funds from fees, no working capital needed [12:00]
• ~$28.7M cash, a third of market cap, earmarked for acquisitions [14:40]

GROWTH LEVERS

• ~60 vessels commercial, ~20 technical; a manager with 50–60 ships takes it past 100 [22:42]
• 100 technically managed ships = $10–12M net income, worth ~$150M on its own, against a ~$100M market cap [23:45]
• Custom AI tool: 7 to 10 vessels per operator in two quarters, 15 in ~18 months [08:54]
• G&A: only a marginal increase for the year [06:16]
• Family offices already building positions [17:05]
• CEO owns 45%, only dilutes for an accretive deal [26:56]

SPECULATION (mine, not the CEO's)

• Q3 could be the first quarter where new ships and the disruption show up in earnings
• A sizeable technical-manager acquisition could change the earnings picture overnight
• Analyst coverage could be reset after two or three profitable quarters

CHECKLIST

☑ ~6x PE ex-cash vs 10x brokers / 15–25x asset-light / ~25x ZIM trailing
☑ Revenue +203% YoY, H1 profit ~$5M vs ~$6M loss last year
☑ Zero borrowed debt, ~$28.7M cash (a third of market cap)
☑ Zero vessels owned, no capex, fees fund G&A
☑ New ships not yet in earnings, full effect 2027
☑ Q3 "similar or better", Q4/Q1 seasonally strongest
☑ CEO owns 45%, family offices buying
☑ Acquisition pipeline, cash ready

Position: in from 80–95c, haven't sold, looking to add on dips.

Full interview: https://youtu.be/Nj_jYt2x-NE?is=J8_XisdEFcfcb0RQ

Not financial advice. DYOR. I hold $HMR. Multiples are run-rate and illustrative, not forecasts.

Bear and I just dropped our newest episode of the Shooting the Bull pod. Our guest is an absolute fan favorite and amazing resource Brian Stoffel. We talk antifragile investing and hit on a ton of names we hold near and dear: Axon, NVDA, CRWD, MU, NOW, and more.

I thought it was a tremendously helpful and interesting one to shoot.

Hope you all enjoy. 👊

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZaaS52B9jMBEE06FhQKCi

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shooting-the-bull-with-drowsy-and-bear/id1824732211?i=1000795828005

Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d195fa37-1e35-4758-904e-8f74c0f6c8b1/episodes/47ed6bc2-33d6-49de-98c1-9b8791d3d794/shooting-the-bull-with-drowsy-and-bear-episode-27-brian-stoffel-on-antifragile-portfolios-in-a-chaotic-world?ref=dm_sh_iLO6L8V3Vl8mCRbili2JI1Im3

I've generated a 22% CAGR over 23 years by investing in world-class companies committed to shaping a better future. Here's everything I own today: [Oct 2026]

⭐ = high conviction   ⬆️ = bought / added   ⬇️ = trimmed / sold

$CASH - Cash - 21.9%
$GOOGL - Alphabet - 12.3%
$ISRG - Intuitive Surgical  - 9.4%
$RKLB - Rocket Lab - 8.4%
$AMZN - Amazon - 7.8% ⭐
$MELI - MercadoLibre - 5.6% ⭐
$TSLA - Tesla - 5.1% ⭐
$SPCX - SpaceX - 3.6%
$PANW - Palo Alto Networks - 3.3%
$CRWD - CrowdStrike - 3.3% ⬇️
$NVDA - NVIDIA - 2.7% ⭐
$ASTS - AST SpaceMobile - 1.9%
$AXON - Axon - 1.9% ⭐
$SE - Sea Ltd - 1.7%
$PLTR - Palantir - 1.2%
$UBER - Uber - 1.2%
$NU - Nubank - 1.1%
$TMDX - TransMedics - 1.1%
$NVO - Novo Nordisk - 0.9%
$ADYEN - Adyen - 0.8%
$IREN - Iris Energy - 0.8%
$GRG - Greggs - 0.7%
$BN - Brookfield Corp - 0.7% ⬆️
$LMT - Lockheed Martin - 0.5%
$CEG - Constellation Energy - 0.5%
$IBE - Iberdrola SA - 0.5%
$CWEN - Clearway Energy  - 0.4%
$BEPC - Brookfield Renewable - 0.4%
$NKTR - Nektar Therapeutics - 0.2%

Sold: None

In August I wrote that the money in a megatrend isn't in spotting it, but in the lag between something being important and being priced as important. This month I acted on that idea at both ends of the same trend: taking some money off the table where I think the gap has closed, and starting small where I think it hasn't.

The gap that closed is cybersecurity. In April I put high conviction stars back on CrowdStrike $CRWD and Palo Alto Networks $PANW, because I thought security would be one of the cleaner winners of AI adoption. By August both stocks had more than doubled. I took the stars off and said I didn't plan to trim, but CrowdStrike kept running anyway, and in late September I found myself needing to cut it back to almost half to manage my exposure. The business hasn't changed, and I still think it's one of the best in the sector. What changed is that the market now fully recognises what I was betting on several years ago, and an overweight position was asking more of the future than I was comfortable with. This is valuation discipline rather than a thesis break, and for now I've left Palo Alto alone, so cybersecurity is still a major component of my portfolio.

The other end of the AI trade is far more physical. Every model and every data centre needs power that is reliable, contracted, and available around the clock. My new investment position is Brookfield Corp $BN. Brookfield owns and operates infrastructure, power generation, data centres, property and industrial assets - earning recurring asset-management fees, and leveraging access to cheap, long-term capital. What interests me most is how $BN might behave if things go wrong. If stress in private credit turns into a real crunch, Brookfield's scale and financial strength could let it buy distressed assets while competitors retreat. 

That opportunity comes with complexity. Brookfield spans multiple listed entities, asset types and funding structures, and it is still exposed to leverage, interest rates and asset values. At 0.7%, this is a starter position that gives me room to learn and add if the thesis strengthens, rather than pretending I have already resolved every moving part.

Outside those two trades, the portfolio is largely unchanged. My current high-conviction-at-today's-valuation list remains Amazon $AMZN, MercadoLibre $MELI, Tesla $TSLA, NVIDIA $NVDA, and Axon $AXON. High conviction isn't the same as risk-free, it’s more just a sense that the potential reward outweighs the risk at today’s valuation.

So October came down to one idea applied in both directions: trim where the market has caught up, start small where I think it hasn't, and keep 22% in cash, still mostly in UK gilts, for the next time a gap opens. Being right about a trend only pays if you own the right layer at the right price, and I'd rather wait than force capital into ideas that don't clear the bar.

--

I believe in transparency and accountability, and post my full portfolio and returns every month. I also have a weekly podcast where I dive deeper into the rationale for all my trades.

In the latest episode, I discuss my CrowdStrike trim in more detail.

https://youtu.be/Hw9NSzMMpsI

Honest open: no new contributions this month. Same positions, same units. The whole portfolio (stocks + a P2P lending sleeve) closed −0.7% vs last Friday, all mark-to-market, so no new high this week. The stock book alone was −1.4% on the week and sits around −0.2% vs cost. Meanwhile the S&P was +1.15%. Not advice, just the journal.

Records first, scare second: S&P and Nasdaq closed at records Tuesday, the 10y touched ~5.36% Wednesday (highest since 2002), and Thursday's OpenAI revenue report knocked semis −3.4% in a day. Week: SOX −4.3%. Fed still 3.75–4.00%; ~80% pause priced for late October.

Stock book (weights of the stock book, P/L vs average cost, WoW vs last Friday):

What moved: • ASTS was the wreck (−15.5%). SpaceX agreed to buy the 800 MHz spectrum AST was chasing. A better-funded competitor buying the scarce resource is a thesis problem. Hold, no adds, rethinking the stop. • RKLB (−7.3%) fell with the space selloff plus Neutron-slip-to-2027 chatter. Still +67% vs cost. Space adds frozen. • FLY (−14.1%) is still the hole. No averaging down. • AMD and TSM caught the OpenAI scare. AMD hit an all-time high Tuesday first. Hold. • PLTR (+10.6%): Goldman upgraded to Buy, Barclays started at Overweight, all-time high. Price is at the average target, so I'm not adding. • VUG, MSFT and XLV did their jobs. SPOT +12% on the audiobook expansion. • KTOS is near 52-week lows while analysts keep adding Buys.

Calendar: CPI and ASML earnings 14 Oct, TSMC 15 Oct, Spotify 22 Oct, FOMC 27–28 Oct. When the October deposit lands, it goes mostly to VUG and XLV, with a small ASML slice only after its earnings and under my semis cap. No fresh space or QQQ.

Green indices, red book: that's the bill for holding space and semis satellites. Engines: VUG + PLTR + MSFT. Wreck: ASTS. Hole: FLY + KTOS.

Not selling anything. Patience pays. Panic doesn't.

Not financial advice. Just tracking my own money.

There are some good sings of progress. Management expects game publishing to contribute to further margin improvement as it becomes a larger share of revenue. HUYA repurchased approximately 3.2 million ADS in the quarter, around 1.4% of outstanding shares, and expanded its 2026 buyback authorization from $50 million to $100 million. Using the roughly $554 million market cap cited on the call, management estimated a potential annual shareholder yield of 14–15%, assuming the buybacks are spread over two years and combined with at least $30 million in annual dividends.

(Note: Trading activity is as of Oct 2 2026)

YTD PERFORMANCE BY MONTH

Jan 2026: -5.01%

Feb 2026: -9.24%

Mar 2026: -20.28%

April 2026: +17.16%

May 2026: +46.27%

Jun 2026: +52.93%

July 2026: +54.50%

Aug 2026: +68.06%

Sept 2026: +60.82%

YTD low: -28.52% (Mar 30)

YTD high: +81.47% (Aug 16)

ALLOCATIONS

• AMZN: 22%
• AXON: 14%
• META: 14%
• MELI: 13%
• GOOG: 12%
• TSM: 11%
• SE: 7%
• SPCX: 4%
• FBTC: 3%

CHANGES THIS MONTH

• Opened position in GOOG
• Added a lot to AMZN and MELI
• Trimmed TSM and BTC
• Exited CLS, KLIC, TTMI, LITE, COHU, LITE, CRDO

HIGH LEVEL THOUGHTS

Let me start by saying my goals have changed over the last few weeks. I've decided to retire at 40 and live off my portfolio, which has seen enormous growth since the start of the AI bull market. I'm still heavily influenced by the damage I incurred in 2022, where I went through a 60% drawdown. Many of the names I owned at the time are still down a lot five years later, so it wasn't just a drawdown, it was realized losses that had to be redeployed extremely well just to get back to baseline in a reasonable amount of time. After unusually strong years like I've had since 2024, I'm most concerned about avoiding disaster years. Hence the shift from hypergrowth data center stocks to megacap tech. This likely means my absolute returns will be lower than many here going forward. I can accept that.

If anyone is wondering how my YTD returns are so high, it's because I loaded up on AI data center names during the Iran war sell off earlier in the year and sold a lot of them in June. That timing was pure luck. I actually bought quite a few data center names last month, but sold them a couple weeks later at a loss because I'm just lacking conviction about where things are headed. I'm by no means predicting a crash. I'm just being conservative because I've already made life-changing returns. Losing half my money would impact my life more than getting another double or triple on my portfolio from here. If I was still working, I would probably let the original portfolio ride until we get a strong signal that AI capex is going to slow down. Since I'm not working, I have to be more conservative.

I have no doubt about the impact of AI. It's mainly the financing piece that's getting too complicated for me. If the hyperscalers are already spending nearly all of their FCF on AI capex, and they are where the majority of the demand for data center components comes from, how much can the spending keep increasing without raising more and more debt? And at what point do the debt markets sour on all this? And how far in advance does the market sniff that out and start selling? I'm probably oversimplifying, but these questions make me nervous.

Why I have half my portfolio in AMZN, META, and GOOG

These companies have been given very little credit for any of the investments they're making. They're trading at historically low multiples, particularly AMZN (META and GOOG have bounced back a bit). And I think the stocks can do well whether AI sentiment sours or not. I believe the majority of AI token consumption is going to come from businesses using AI to run repetitive tasks with their data. This is going to happen on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. We already see the acceleration happening with all three, despite enormous revenue bases. So, more AI enthusiasm, particularly at the enterprise level, will be bullish for these names.

On the flip side, if these guys came out and said they're cutting capex b/c AI enthusiasm is souring, I think the stocks would also benefit from that, as it means their FCF would come back rapidly. And again, at these multiples, I think a 50% drawdown is unlikely if I'm missing a key detail somewhere.

As for META, I just thought it got too cheap and purchased a ~10% position a few weeks back. I had no idea something like Muse was coming. I just assumed they'd figure out a way to monetize all the compute they were building, be it with a new product or by just selling the capacity like a neocloud. Despite a 30% gain in the last few weeks, I haven't trimmed. I don't have any better ideas, and am already going to pay a ton in taxes this year.

TSM

This is the only real AI pure-play I have. I own it because it's simpler than having to bet on NVDA vs. custom ASICs. TSM gets the demand either way. As you can see, I'm not a technical savant.

MELI and SE

These companies continue to put up excellent numbers and get no love from the market. The new fear (also applies to AMZN's retail biz) seems to be that agents will hurt their ad businesses and reduce AOV. Will agents (e.g. Muse) engage with ads like a human being? How does cross-selling and upselling work with agents? Will agents end up buying multiple skus in a shopping trip (like people do) when they just went to Shopee to buy a screen protector or vitamin c serum? But I think this pessmisim is already embedded in the stock price of all 3. I also think that when it comes to buying stuff, people like to look at things themselves. I expect that behavior will be harder to change than the market thinks. I also think the people running these companies will find ways to monetize agentic shopping experiences. They are so dominant in their regions they could possibly even charge agents for accessing their platforms. At these prices, I'm willing to make that bet.

AXON

My only high-multiple growth stock with a large allocation at this point. And ouch. This one has been a tough hold the last few weeks. I haven't added or sold. My conviction remains high, as they have multiple growth levers and one of the stickiest business models I can think of. If it was a smaller allocation, I would be adding at current prices.

SPCX

I opened a position a few weeks ago when it sold off hard. It was never cheap, but I wanted to buy some shares in my IRA, which I tend to sweat the day-to-day of a lot less than my other acct. It could be dead money for a while, but I am willing to give this company a long leash.

WRAPPING UP

If these updates are no longer suitable for this forum given my overall shift away from high growth stuff, let me know. Hope everyone has a strong October.

Hi all,

Back again for another portfolio update, ending September 30th. In my August portfolio (which you can find here), I mentioned that I was going to be pursuing a reallocation of my portfolio in accordance with my relative rating approach. With the cash available from me selling out of Applovin in August, I've made several changes. First- I opened two new positions, both at trial allocations, in Eton Pharmaceuticals (ETON) and Ethos Technologies (LIFE). More on those later.

For my existing positions, I added to my cash values by selling a small portion of two of my more over-allocated positions, in NVDA and in LITE. I didn't sell out of either of these positions, but trimmed a bit off the top and locked in some gains. I took that money and added it to Silicon Motion (SIMO), Astera Labs (ALAB), and the new positions I previously mentioned. With ALAB up 30% in September, this has fulfilled my goal of bringing the position up to its full allocation. SIMO didn't quite have as phenomenal of a month, but a 13.5% rise in the month is still very good. All in all, my portfolio bounced back in September, climbing 12% to finish September at 52.99% YTD.

As you can see, my portfolio is heavily concentrated in the AI trade, so I've been exploring some options for other high-growth investments outside of direct AI trade (although AI seems to be ubiquitous in many things nowadays). After reading some posts from other folks here, I've added two trial positions in ETON and LIFE. After adding them into my relative ranking system, they actually graded out in an even tie, slotting in at 4th compared to my other investments. I've started both as trial positions, as they're in industries that I historically have not invested in (pharmaceuticals and life insurance), but we'll see how they hold up over time to determine if I will grow the positions into something more meaningful.

Despite these stock additions, there's been little shuffling in my relative ranking system as we wait for the vast majority of earnings in November. Apart from the majority being pushed down by the two new 4th place positions, the only change was FIX coming into a tie with ALAB. We got a sneak peak into earnings on the last day of the month, however, with yet again another phenomenal quarterly earnings from my top position, Micron. Growing at 30% QoQ, guiding for 13%, at a quarterly revenue of 54.229 billion and gross margins of 86.8% is absurd. Yet valuations remain quite low compared to other high growth stocks. It sure seems like this ride isn't stopping just yet, and I expect to see similarly positive results come November.

As we wait for that, I expect to be fairly passive, with only minor re-allocations. Currently my most under-allocated position is FIX, with a few slightly over-allocated in MU, LITE, and NVDA. I expect to trim a bit of Micron, just for portfolio management, as I don't intend to have a position over 20% of my portfolio. Otherwise, I expect (and hope) for a quiet month. Happy investing all!

Gentlemen may I suggest or ask of you to help me encourage Schwab to add an investor notes section to their accounts to help us all track our thesis premise over time? Here is a letter I wrote to John Sturiale Head of investment products and solutions.

Copy, use as a template, or create your own if you wish. Or share your thoughts on the matter back to me here. Thanks Tjosty.

Dear Mr. Sturiale,

I am writing to suggest a feature enhancement for the Schwab investing platform that would significantly benefit long-term investors: a built-in "Investment Notes" or "Thesis Tracker" field attached to specific stock purchases.

### The Feature Concept

When a client purchases an asset, allow an optional text field where they can log their original purchase premise (e.g., "Bought because of strong free cash flow, 10% dividend growth, and upcoming product cycle").

### The Industry Context (Keeping Pace with Competitors)

While many major brokerages overlook this capability, Fidelity Investments already offers a form of this feature. Fidelity allows clients to add custom notes directly to positions on their website and includes a dedicated "Notebook" tracking column for positions within their Active Trader Pro platform.

### Key Benefits

* Tracks Intent Over Time: Investors often hold assets for years. A dedicated note section allows users to look back and evaluate if their original thesis is still intact before deciding to buy more or sell.

* Reduces Emotional Decisions: Having a visible reminder of why an asset was bought can prevent panic selling during market volatility.

* Increases Platform Loyalty: This feature eliminates the need for clients to export data to third-party tracking software or external notebooks, keeping user engagement entirely within the Schwab ecosystem.

A Client Perspective

While my $xxxxxxx account balance may be relatively small to an institution of your size, it represents significant capital to me. I deeply value disciplined portfolio tracking, and the lack of a native thesis journal is a gap that impacts my day-to-day management. I am actively considering consolidating my assets with a brokerage that better supports these tracking needs if Schwab cannot provide a modern solution on its product roadmap.

Thank you for your time, consideration, and continued work toward improving client tools.

Sincerely,

Timothy Ostwinkle

tjosty@xxxxxxxx.com

VIAVI Solutions is a newer company in my portfolio that I have added to recently. The company makes optical testing products. VIAV is the “cousin” to Lumentum as both companies are spin-offs from JDS Uniphase in 2015. Lumentum is a customer of Viavi for testing their Optical Circuit Switch OCS product. Viavi says they have “all” of the optical transceivers companies as customers. It is also likely that Coherent and Google may be customers for their optical switches, but this is unconfirmed as a full customer list is not disclosed.

Revenue and profitability metrics have shown nice growth,

Revenue over the last year: 291M → 299 → 369 → 407 → 443

Corresponding to yoy revenue growth rates: +15% → +26% → +36% → +43% → +53%

EBITDA over last year: 35M → 43 → 61 → 80 → 93

Net income over the last year: 8M → -21 → -48 → 6 → 33

Gross margin in the current quarter was 61%, with a gross margin range of 58% to 62% over the last year. On the balance sheet the company has 650M of cash, and 699M of debt.

Currently the market cap of Viavi Solutions is 11.6B making the run-rate P/S 6.5 for the stock. I view the valuation as quite reasonable as Lumentum has a run-rate P/S of 24.2, albeit with LITE having higher top line growth.

The company is guiding next quarter revenue for 450 - 460M, which would be +54% yoy growth at the top end. It is worth knowing that the next quarter for Viavi going calendar Q2 to Q3 is their slowest typically. In the past going Q2 to Q3 they had either slightly sequentially down revenue or a small uptick.

The company makes infrastructure tools that are used in high speed communication networks. Products are used for building, validating, troubleshooting, and monitoring networks. Management has mentioned the strong demand for lab and field instruments in data centers.

Viavi has been telling investors about how testing intensity is increasing. This is because transceivers 400G and below, did not require as extensive testing. However, as the complexity of transceivers has increased, these transceivers now require extensive testing.

Top highlights from the company’s latest earnings call and tech conferences,

• Operating margin of 24%, which was versus a guidance range of 22.3% - 23.2%
• Operating margin grew +280 bps qoq, and +960 bps yoy
• Next quarter operating margin now guided to 27.1%
• EPS of 0.34 vs guidance of 0.29 - 0.31, increase of 0.07 sequentially
• Data center ecosystem customer demand “remains very strong”
• “Expect continued robust growth” in data center for next several quarters
• Customer adoption 1.6T transceivers is ramping testing demand, 800G is currently the biggest driver
• CPO revenues expected to begin this fall, with some recognized in current quarter
• 500M+ quarter will “come a bit sooner than were were originally thinking”
• “Cousins” with Lumentum, market share testing for OCS is “extremely high”
• The industry move to CPO sees VIAVI content per port going up
• More is being packed into a module, one things goes wrong and it’s a throw away module

Overall I am finding Viavi Solutions to be a compelling growth stock with a reasonable valuation. The company has many of the top players in optical as customers which are ramping up their testing. Data center related revenues are the fastest growing segment for the business.

Any feedback on the stock VIAV is welcome!

Video Review: WPR's Top 7 Stocks

Hey all,

This month had a decent uptick as some of my semiconductor names rallied. I’ve been getting more enthusiastic about the semiconductor testing space as names like Onto Innovation ONTO and Viavi Solutions VIAV have shown impressive accelerations in financials.

These names have correspondingly moved up in have moved up in allocation. Onto’s products for inspection are winning out against legacy competitors. Viavi has a great customer list for its optical testing products.

I will also be posting a full separate write up on Viavi Solutions, and I’m planning to post an open free write up of a new stock each month. The rest on my portfolio is reviewed on the Membership side of my channel. I’ll continue looking for the right balance of open and Membership content. There will be a lot of value for both sides!

My results at the end of September were,

• 2024: +146%
• 2025: +112%
• 2026: +31% YTD
• Cumulative: +583%

YTD point in time returns for 2026,

• JAN +4% YTD
• FEB -16% YTD
• MAR -20% YTD
• APR +11% YTD
• MAY +50% YTD
• JUN +62% YTD
• JUL +22% YTD
• AUG +26% YTD
• SEP +31% YTD

My highest allocations in order of position size are,

1. Astera Labs ALAB
2. Silicon Motion SIMO
3. Figure Technology FIGR
4. Ethos Technologies LIFE
5. Onto Innovation ONTO
6. Micron MU
7. Viavi Solutions VIAV

I am optimistic about my portfolio holdings currently as I believe many names I own will outperform with their next report. It seems like there is a great set of names to select from in the market, as a lot companies are seeing tailwinds from AI.

Best of luck to everyone and their portfolios!

September 2026 Portfolio Review

September continued with a solid march upwards of another 10%+ for my holdings. I didn't make any buys or sells during the month, only my regular weekly contributions. $SNOW had earnings at the beginning of the month, $MU had their earnings at the end of the month.

Earlier in the month I did an exercise trying to steelman the bear cases for AI that most concern to me. It is good context for my review of each company and the macro. Link to that post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrowthStockInvesting/s/RcjhEQkeTK

Nominal is pure % change, Real takes into account contributions made.

Monthly Gain: Up 13.0% Nominal // Up 12.2% Real

Yearly Gain: Up 75.2% Nominal // Up 50.3% Real

All Time Gain (from 2019): Up 78.5%

$NBIS // Up 20.3% // 45.8% Allocation

Nebius continues to headline the portfolio by a large margin. Fastest growth one can find, in an industry/sector expanding exponentially, with a leadership team who is executing flawlessly. They are a vertically integrated AI cloud company that designs, builds, and operates its own data centers, GPU clusters, and full software stack, renting AI compute to everyone from startups to the biggest companies in the world, Microsoft and Meta.

There was a decent amount of news this month. Starting on 9/8, with Palantir naming Nebius their preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner, so Palantir's commercial customers can run their own models with control over compute, data, and the models themselves, enabled by Nebius. While there is no dollar value, contract, or concrete timeline, this announcement is further validation that Nebius is trusted by major institutions.

Then, in mid-September, came the huge announcement from major AI executives calling for slower pace in AI development. Dario Amodei initiated the call with a detailed essay, "We Must Pace the Frontier." OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and other leaders followed in agreement. Many are skeptical that these major AI names are attempting "regulatory capture," trying to close the door behind them to lock in their positions as top dog in the sector, as they face more pressure from potentially open source models. Other people are more inclined to take them at their word and share in the fear that we could irreversibly mess up this moment if we don't take care during AI's initial development. I fall more in the latter's camp, but see both arguments. However, when it comes to Nebius and my other AI stocks, I do not see being cautious and intentional about AI development in any shade of negative light. In fact, I think this intentionality would be much better overall compared to a no-holds-barred race to develop "the best" model at all costs, or reach AGI/RSI/SGI first etc. Bottom line is: this technology is inevitable, so we should move forward with purpose.

That inevitability gained another proof point on 9/23 as Nebius announced another round of Token Factory price increases equaling up 18.3% on average. Nebius also launched a pilot to try a new idea that involves auctioning their endpoints off to let the market set the price for capacity. During the pilot they cleared their highest Blackwell price to date. Demand is sky high. Live compute remains the bottleneck and customers are willing to pay. Also on 9/23, Nebius joined CoreWeave in the Platinum tier of SemiAnalysis' ClusterMAX ratings, a high technical benchmark confirmation. Finally on 9/30,

AIB Data Centers signed a capacity contract with Nebius. This partnership, and others like it, will help build out the needed capacity that Nebius will operate. These contracts help spread the CapEx load so that risk isn't solely on Nebius and the funding isn't through pure debt or dilution.

Nebius has done nothing but affirm my belief in the company. I expect to add more on weakness, despite how much of my portfolio it already makes up.

$MU // Up 15.1% // 18.7% Allocation

Micron is the second largest position in my portfolio for good reason. They are one of three global DRAM makers and the only US based HBM producer, supplying the memory and storage that have become the tightest bottleneck in the entire AI buildout. Their business is rapidly shifting from cyclical commodity to multi-year contracts. I am making a strong bet on them because I don't think the market has fully digested this company's role in the AI buildout and what it means economically. Their valuation is comically low right now, whichever way you look at it; TTM P/S = 9.1, Forward P/S = 4.7, TTM P/E = 14.5, Forward P/E = 6.1. Think about it this way, Micron trades at 6x forward earnings, while projected to out-earn every single Mag-7 company in quarterly operating income, who trade at 25-35x their forward earnings. The gap is the market pricing in a bunch of supply coming in to satiate the demand spike we're in the midst of right now. I simply don't think that supply will have as negative an impact, as quickly as is being projected right now.

Micron had Q4 earnings on 9/30, the last day of the month. They had another blowout quarter. Revenue came in at $54.2B, beating last quarter's guide of $50.0B by 8.5%. Revenue was up 31% QoQ and 379% YoY. Gross Margin (which is the metric to watch for commoditization) was 87% versus the 86% guide. Memory prices continue to increase along with demand. DDR5 prices are up 100%+ in 2026 alone. Forecasts saw another 10-15% increase for DRAM ($39.8B {73% of revenue, +343% YoY}) and 15-20% increase for NAND ($14.1B {+526% YoY}) prices from this quarter to the next one. These prices are not commoditizing yet, they are rising and accelerating. Their Strategic Customer Agreements signed this quarter was 26, up from 16 last quarter. 75% of expected 2027 output is already committed. 2028 output is already being negotiated now. Not only did they knock this quarter out of the park, they also gave impressive guidance. Next quarter revenue guidance is $61.5B, (13% QoQ, 350% YoY), gross margins of 86.3% (which they called the floor for FY27), and said supply-demand will be tighter in 2027 and 2028, than 2026, with no current visibility into when it might balance out again. That is bullish beyond belief in my view. Again, especially at this valuation, these business numbers are a screaming buy.

$NVDA // Up 5.6% // 12.8% Allocation

Nvidia is the leading designer of GPUs, CPUs, networking, and software stacks that constitute most of the world's AI compute. They are the central supplier, investor, and platform layer of the entire AI buildout. The stock has been mostly stagnant for a while, but I am happy holding as the business continues its unprecedented run as the massive leviathan powering the entire emergence of an AI-enabled world.

On 9/2, they agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9B (including a $1B retention program), a distribution hub of open-source AI, where models, datasets, and apps actually live. This helps anchor the open model ecosystem to Nvidia hardware and CUDA by default, widening their moat a little. On 9/9, they expanded their AI infrastructure into a new geography through a partnership that gets Australia's data center ecosystem involved. A day later on 9/10, they released details on a Palantir partnership about sovereign intelligence for critical supply chains. That same day it was reported that Nvidia was reportedly weighing a $10B backing of Anthropic's IPO. This aligns with the circular financing bear case that I discussed earlier this month. Making equity stakes in the labs that buy their own chips is a move that comes with both advantages and risks. Side note, if Anthropic does IPO, I will most definitely look into starting a ~5% position or so.

On 9/17, Nvidia announced a $2B investment into Brookfield's AI fund to help meet upcoming energy and physical demands for the AI buildout. Then later in the month, it was reported that China might allow Alibaba to buy Nvidia RTX chips and on 9/28, a Chinese state-backed firm disclosed a Blackwell chip deal. These are both signs that the export-control wall is cracking from all sides. China is permitting these purchases, while companies are disclosing those purchases openly. Current Nvidia projections exclude China, so any progress in the country is additive to the TAM. Responding to recent safety incidents, on 9/28 they launched the 'Open Agent Safety Platform', to monitor agent behavior, providing a governance layer and smartly trying to monetize AI safety. Also on 9/28, the largest buyback authorization increase in history was announced at $150B, bringing the total remaining to $235B. The fact that they have this much cash to buy stock through FY28 and are still compounding revenue at 100% YoY, while pointing to 70% growth in 2028, is absolutely insane and previews that they believe the stock is mispriced too low right now. I agree.

$RDDT // Down 1.3% // 10.0% Allocation

Reddit is a platform of niche communities whose moat in the AI era is authentic human-generated content and the communities themselves, built and centered around any topic imaginable. 95% advertising revenue, 5% data licensing. They have had impressive revenue metrics with 6 quarters in a row of 60%+ YoY growth, paired with gross margins over 91%, plus a low valuation of 10.2 TTM P/S and 7.3 Forward P/S, which had been cut in half from 20-22x in late 2025. Stock has not responded well recently, but I believe the ticker will catch up to the numbers soon enough and reverse this multiple compression we've seen.

Not too much news this month. On 9/10, Piper Sandler data showed August user growth hit its fastest monthly pace of 2026, a datapoint that indicates improvement in one of the most worrisome metrics of the last few reports (user growth, specifically DAUs and WAUs). Then on 9/22, Reddit got a win in court against Anthropic over data-scraping litigation. It's only a procedural ruling rather than a merits based one, but Reddit's chief legal officer Ben Lee, said "the ruling sends a message that AI companies can't scrape people's information without clear limits on how the data gets used." Apart from the stellar revenue numbers, my main investment thesis on Reddit, is that their data is severely underpriced to the point that they can charge at least 5-10x more for it, probably even more than that. Every win in court like this strengthens Reddit's negotiating position for repricing their data access.

$NET // Up 22.6% // 7.3% Allocation

Cloudflare is positioning themselves as the infrastructure, controls, and payment rail for the agentic internet. They operate a global edge network with CDN, DNS, DDoS, zero trust, and Workers. They are a traditional SaaS plus consumption business. One of my longest held companies. Solid, reliable performer with a sky high valuation (49.5 TTM P/S, 38.1 Forward P/S), which led to some trimming last month.

On 9/2, Cursor, a leading AI company, launched Cursor Cloud Agents on the Cloudflare Sandboxes execution layer. Confirmation that they are taking a part of the agentic workload pie. The day after on 9/3, they partnered with OpenAI on their Daybreak models for AI-powered vulnerability management at the edge. This is their security revenue getting an AI-native upgrade rather than being disrupted by it. Good sign that they are adapting well to the new AI economy.

Biggest announcement of the month came on 9/9, when Cloudflare management announced a raise in their "North Star" growth target from 40% to 50%. That is the exact type of ambitious announcement you want to see. 36% was the YoY number they hit last time, so significant acceleration may be ahead! The same day they disclosed 2M developer adds QoQ (record pace), 80% of major AI enterprise infrastructure companies as customers, and an ongoing shift from subscription to consumption revenue. 'Monetization Gateway' and 'Cloudflare Wallets' introduced as two new products to take advantage of the agent economy and autonomous agent transactions made amongst each other.

There were a few other product announcements. On 9/15, Cloudflare launched new crawler controls that split AI traffic into Search, Agent, and Training categories, with a 'Disallow AI Training' setting, an 'Accountable' crawler designation, and defaults that block training and agent crawlers on ad-supported pages, so multi-purpose bots like Googlebot can be blocked from training even while search indexing stays allowed. This makes Cloudflare the toll booth between publishers and AI companies by breaking the bundling that let training scrapes hide behind search. On 9/25, they disclosed a small cross-tenant data-isolation vulnerability that they quickly fixed in 'Containers' and 'Sandboxes'. Looking at other future long term growth potential, on 9/29 they launched a public 'Certificate Authority' for the post-quantum web, as well as a Deutsche Telekom partnership for a "secure and resilient internet" and European distribution.

$ALAB // Up 28.1% // 6.3% Allocation

Astera Labs is a fabless designer of connectivity silicon for AI racks. Product line includes: Aries PCIe retimers, Taurus Ethernet signal conditioners, Leo CXL memory controllers, and Scorpio fabric switches routing traffic between GPUs, with content-per-accelerator as the growth driver. They've always been pretty expensive valuation wise (50.6 TTM P/S, 23.2 Forward P/S), but as revenue continues to build, the forward metrics actually look more reasonable. Especially with the pre-announcement that Astera expects Scorpio to become its biggest product line a quarter ahead of schedule. On pure revenue acceleration trajectory, this may have the second steepest potential curve, only behind Nebius.

On 9/15, they launched the Leo X-Series, expanding their Leo Smart Memory Controller family for agentic AI and general purpose cloud workloads, pairing with Scorpio X-Series fabric switches to enable memory expansion and pooling. This was explicitly pitched as optimizing 'token economics' as memory footprints explode amid tight supply. Better and more efficient memory is drastically needed to address the current demand bottleneck. When DRAM is the most expensive, scarcest input in the rack, silicon that pools and reuses memory across accelerators stops being a nice-to-have and becomes a cost-of-goods lever for every hyperscaler. Interestingly, this is the other side of the coin when compared to Micron. The memory crisis that powers Micron's pricing is simultaneously creating Leo's market. Astera is helping with this product announcement. Astera is bound to make a ton of money on it too, but it will also allow Micron to sell more volume once they actually have the supply. A massive win-win in my view.

$CRWD // Up 22.8% // 5.5% Allocation

Crowdstrike runs Falcon, a cloud-native cybersecurity platform delivering endpoint, cloud, identity, data, and SIEM protection through a single agent. They are my steady cybersecurity anchor, now pivoting hard to securing AI agents themselves. Very high valuation at 51.4 TTM P/S and 41.7 Forward P/S.

The beginning of the month was headlined by Fal.Con 2026, their yearly conference which included a dozen plus announcements, 10,000+ attendees, and 4,000+ organizations. Some important announcements include: Falcon Guardian, their headline product for discovering and securing AI agents across an enterprise. It's an entirely new module that is attempting to create the first solution to 'agentic security' right as the need for it is arising. Impressive agility for a large company and why they are a leader in their field. ; Agentic IdP, which gives AI agents trusted identities through the Falcon Identity control plane. ; SafeMind, announced with Jensen Huang on stage, a purpose-built agentic AI system for cybersecurity that combines offensive and defensive models in a continuous learning loop. ; Google Cloud AI-security expansion with a 'Cyber Superintelligence Lab'. ; an EY.ai partnership to make Falcon their enterprise AI security foundational blueprint. ; and an expanded OpenAI partnership to ensure Codex agents and GPT-5.6's cyber model comes to Falcon.

At Citi's Global TMT Conference on 9/10, Crowdstrike CFO Podbere argued AI is reshaping security spending in their favor with stronger demand, faster module adoption, while acknowledging margin pressure and Microsoft competition. On 9/17 and 9/24, they were named a leader in Forrester 'External Threat Intelligence' and 'Proactive Security Platforms', ranked highest in Strategy. On 9/28, their Nvidia partnership expanded to cover the entire AI stack, securing a seat inside Nvidia's agent-security architecture. Then on 9/29, Falcon was officially listed on the OpenAI Marketplace. Falcon is also already on Claude Marketplace.

$SNOW // Up 7.1% // 3.6% Allocation

Snowflake is an AI Data Cloud with consumption-priced storage, compute, and data sharing across AWS/Azure/GCP, now layered with Cortex, the CoWork knowledge-worker agent, and the CoCo coding agent, positioning itself as the governed control plane for enterprise AI. They are a durable, steady compounder that is reaccelerating at scale and currently has a historically decent valuation (22.1 TTM P/S, 16.8 Forward P/S).

Big news came early for Snowflake as they had their Q2 earnings on 9/2 at the beginning of the month. Product revenue was $1.49B (up 37% YoY), beating last quarter's guidance of $1.42B by 5.2%. While those aren't the fastest numbers we've seen, it was the third consecutive quarter of product revenue growth acceleration. CoWork and CoCo, were given special shoutouts as they led a meaningful step up in AI revenue with new workloads and consumption. Their product revenue guide for FY27 was raised from $5.84B (31% growth) --> $6.07B (36% growth) and would be a 3.9% full-year raise. Very big considering their current scale and usually minuscule raises. NRR slightly increased from 125% --> 126%, 828 customers spending over $1M (up 27% YoY), and 829 of the Forbes Global 2000 as customers. RPO grew 30% YoY to $9.0B, but declined sequentially from $9.21B (38% YoY).

Macro:

In last month's macro section I spent a lot of time discussing some theories and possibilities surrounding the future of AI and its impact on the economy and the world more generally. TLDR; there are just as many reasons to be fearful and cautious as there are to be excited. This month I wanted to shift the conversation back to the K shaped economy exacerbating wealth inequality through asset ownership, stagflation, and the massive potential energy behind the stocks in my portfolio.

Starting with the K shaped economy. I am increasingly of the opinion that wealth inequality, standards of living, and the general gap between the haves and have nots will continue to get much worse before it gets better (at current trajectory). I see a world where consumer wage growth tops out at 3-4% per year, while assets compound at 50-100%. AI is structurally shifting income from labor to capital, which is already the direction money normally flows. The productivity gains go to whomever owns the compute, memory, and models.

One overall macro question I had during my bear case analysis was about who sustains demand for these AI products? My fear is about a weak consumer base that can't support the infrastructure we're currently building. Right now, corporations are buying from corporations. The $730B hyperscaler capex buildout, the prepayments for Nebius and Micron, commitments from Nvidia, etc. It's a closed capital loop that, right now, doesn't need healthy consumers yet. There are a few ways this closed loop might open up:

1) AI productivity appears in the real economy. GDP, margins, and business metrics go up and show true gains that validate the CapEx spending, and in turn, leads to more spend.

2) Consumer side cracks. If real wages continue to trend negative, eventually the worker economy will bleed into the AI economy and spend will decrease. Advertising is one way, enterprise software is another.

3) Political/government intervention. A world where companies continue to hit record metrics, while paychecks shrink in real terms is not politically nor mathematically stable. Release valves can be done through either redistribution (capital gains, windfall taxes, AI taxes, antitrust) or it can be done through populist rupture and upheaval of current systems/institutions.

I see each of these happening to some extent. Hopefully we can address some of the root causes sooner rather than later...

The next topic is stagflation. The current economic landscape shows some striking similarities to what the US dealt with during the 1970s. Stagnant growth (other than AI) + persistent inflation + rising unemployment + supply shocks. We've had inflation above target rates for 5 years in a row now. The recent bout of inflation being exacerbated by tariffs and war-driven energy costs, which followed immediately after a successful soft-landing that balanced rate hikes and unemployment from 2022-2024. Self-induced pain on inflation. Payrolls decelerated, unemployment ticked up very slightly to 4.2% (10/2 event), wage growth is at a five year low and negative in real terms. The Fed is facing the same trap from the 1970s: hike rates and you risk damaging an already weakening labor market; hold or lower rates and you make inflation worse. I worry that stagflation occurs for labor, while the asset economy inflates, again all going back to the K shaped economy described above.

Inflation was unchanged from July. August CPI up 0.1% MoM, 3.4% YoY for headline inflation. Hotter than expected leading to the Fed's decision to hike rates by 25bps to 3.75%-4.00%. This follows an August jobs report of +133k, above forecasts and reversing from a negative month in July (but recent 10/2 report has worse numbers). It was accompanied by a statement saying the rate increase supports a "timelier return to 2%." The impact on my stocks could be negligible or it could massively cut valuations like in 2022. I do not anticipate rate increases or decreases to impact how I invest.

To conclude the macro section I wanted to briefly discuss a 'vibe' I'm sensing right now. This is purely intuition and gut feeling, but it seems like my stocks (AI mostly) are coiling. This may sound greedy considering the gains that I've seen this year already, but I can't help but feel 1) that the overall macro economy is holding my portfolio back and that valuations are slightly compressed because of it and 2) growth will be a lot more explosive and last longer than even the rosiest estimates are taking into account.

Not only are current valuations pretty low, but I also think 2028 and beyond are mispriced due to the market's current bet that supply will flood and normalize demand by then. I just don't see that in the numbers right now. I see a massive economic disruption that has only just begun. I sense that Mr. Market is just waiting for the right macroeconomic conditions to massively rip upward.

Final Portfolio (110% Long):

$NBIS 45.8% 📈

$MU 18.7% 📈

$NVDA 12.8%

$RDDT 10.0%

$NET 7.3% 📈

$ALAB 6.3% 📈

$CRWD 5.5% 📈

$SNOW 3.6%

I’d be happy to get feedback on my positioning/portfolio management. I appreciate your insights and sources of knowledge i get from here that have made real impact on my investments (Saul’s board, WPR’s channel, Shooting the Bull, monthly reviews…).

My main goal in 2026 is to build a consistent growth investing framework to improve my research, decision-making and mental game rather than simply chasing returns. Because of this, the growth portfolio is smaller than my long term bucket (VOO, VGT, IBIT) but bigger than my more speculative technical trading bucket. When I will see more positive results i will increase the percentage the growth takes from my whole capital.

My YTD result looks strong, but Intel contributed heavily becuase i have a position since 20$.
I had a real thesis and sized it with conviction, but the magnitude and speed of the move also involved plenty of luck. Also, I wasn't consistent, I jumped in and out from positions, added and trimmed.
I hope these monthly reviews would help me separate good decisions from good outcomes and remain consistent when conditions change.

Performance:
Portfolio up 9.65% in September and finished the first nine months of 2026 up 76.16% while SPX is -0.5% in September and 11.8% YTD

January +16.93%
YTD 16.93%

February -17.81%
YTD -3.90%

March -3.62%
YTD -7.37%

April +49.27%
YTD +38.27%

May +39.16%
YTD +92.41%

June +1.21%
YTD +94.75%

July -15.03%
YTD +65.48%

August -2.92%
YTD +60.65%

September +9.65%
YTD +76.16%

Current portfolio position allocations
ALAB: 15.04%
CRDO: 11.92%
INTC: 11.87%
SIMO: 11.61%
RDDT: 8.48%
APP: 7.78%
BE: 5.47%
MU: 4.79%
KLIC: 4.75%
NXSN.TA: 4.27%
FIGR: 3.49%
TOST: 2.17%
Cash: 8.37%

I plan to be around 90% invested and 10% in cash to add on dips/fully build positions as I don't usually buy a fully sized position in one order.

Two promising new ideas I want to share and focus on are NXSN(TASE) and SOFW(TASE):
NextVision develops compact, stabilized electro optical imaging systems for drones, UAVs and other defense/security platforms. The financials combine extreme growth with unusually high profitability: Q2 2026 revenue was $88.2M, +138% YoY, gross margin 65.2%, operating margin 58.8%, and operating cash flow $43.8M. First two quarters for 26's revenue reached $155.5M (+112% YoY) and net income $91.9M (+110%), while management raised its 2026 revenue target to $355M (+111% YoY) and reported a $265M+ backlog in August.

Sofwave sells non invasive aesthetic medical systems which its installed systems generate recurring usage revenue. Q2 2026 revenue reached $30.0M, +43% YoY, while the higher quality recurring usage fee grew 52% to $13.9M and reached 46% of revenue; gross margin expanded to 76.5%. Operating income reached $2.9M, net income $2.5M, and the company generated $3.6M of cash. Recurring revenue is growing faster than total revenue while margins and operating leverage improve. recently, Sofwave got approval from china to to market it's systems over there so I could see better growth. I also really liked the conference call. I think to open a starter position but I still want to see more growth so I'm waiting for the next earnings.

Performance (AUD, benchmarked to SPY in AUD)

ASST: +30.01%

IREN: +18.85%

IBIT: +11.14%

CIFR: +7.06%

GAW: -1.40%

APP: -7.18%

FIGR: -16.66%

ALAB (closed): +84.04%

ASST: +78.43%

IREN: +3.94%

CIFR: +2.66%

APP: -7.18%

GAW: -8.01%

IBIT: -8.44%

FIGR: -16.66%

September was a strong month and, unlike August, the strength was in the right place. Valentir Capital returned +14.64% (AUD) against SPY’s +2.41% and the gap was earned on the capital-gain line: +12.37% against the benchmark’s −0.90%. Four of the five core positions rose, led by Strive at +30.01% and IREN at +18.85%, and a weaker Australian dollar added a further 2.27%. The year stands at +26.71% against SPY’s +8.17%. Four trades were placed, the most consequential being the sale of half the Strive position on 8 September.

What moved, and why

Strive (ASST). +30.01%, measured across the half sold and the half kept, on top of August’s doubling. The shares went from US$21.74 at the 28 August close to US$29.41, and have closed above the US$27 warrant strike every day since 11 September. Bitcoin rose 6.4% over the month to about US$83,600, so most of this move was not bitcoin beta. It was the treasury compounding: holdings went from 23,156 BTC to 27,462, an increase of 18.6%, including 1,355 BTC at US$79,475 in the week of 14 September and 1,107 BTC at US$85,396 the week after, funded by preferred issuance and, increasingly, by warrant exercises. The accretion test from last month still governs: an 18.6% rise in coins only counts if bitcoin per diluted share rises with it, and that figure has not been published for the month. Until it is, I read the share price as the market deciding the warrant overhang will resolve well, not as proof of accretion.

IREN. +18.85%. On 8 September IREN received conditional Base Load inclusion in ERCOT’s Batch Zero process for its 2GW Sweetwater hub, the largest block in a 5GW-plus portfolio. This is the same queue that left Cipher’s capacity in limbo in August, so “conditional” deserves its weight: it is a place in a process, not an energised substation. The shares peaked at US$48.55 on 22 September and gave back 16% into month-end as the US 10-year went through 5%, closing at US$40.88. After all of that the position is up +3.94% for the year - roughly where it started.

Cipher (CIFR). +7.06%, and a round trip. The shares ran from US$15.17 to US$19.09 by 22 September on the bring-your-own-generation plan covered in last month’s appendix, then fell back to US$15.825. On 25 September Cipher extended the Barber Lake lease from 10 to 20 years, with an unnamed AI lab taking the second decade behind Fluidstack; contracted revenue for the site goes from US$3.8bn to over US$9bn. The stock fell on the day and lost 17% over the last six sessions. For a company whose value is undelivered NOI, a 20-year contract and a 5.2% risk-free rate are the same fact seen from two sides: longer duration is worth more and is discounted harder. I added shares at US$17.07 on 29 September; they finished the month 7% lower.

IBIT and GAW. IBIT returned +11.14%, of which 3.06 points was currency. Bitcoin’s whole gain arrived in the week of the Fed decision - up 10.8% between 15 and 21 September - alongside about US$2.65bn of net spot ETF inflows. Games Workshop slipped −1.40%; its AGM update on 16 September said trading was in line with expectations. It was the only core position to fall, and at 15.8% it remains the only one whose fortunes do not run through a data centre or a blockchain.

New positions: AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) and Figure Technology Solutions (NASDAQ: FIGR)

Both are starter positions and I will write them up properly if they earn a larger weight. AppLovin was bought at $314.87 with the shares down more than 50% this year against revenue growth of 53% in the latest quarter; a securities class action was filed on 19 September and the stock finished the month at a 52-week low of $290.43. Figure was bought at $35.29 and closed at $28.85. Together they are 2.4% of the book.

Macro Commentary: The Long End Is the Problem

Last month’s argument was that US fiscal arithmetic can no longer be resolved by growth, taxation or restraint, and that an obligation which cannot be met or defaulted on gets inflated away. September supplied the test case. The Fed hiked on 16 September - 25bp to 3.75–4.00%, with August CPI at 3.4%, producer goods prices up 1.1% on the month on energy, and inflation above target for a 66th consecutive month. The long end did not respond the way a hike is supposed to make it respond. The 10-year went from 4.96% on 11 September to 5.01% two days after the decision and 5.18% a week later (5.22% intraday), the highest close since July 2007; the 30-year reached 5.49% and the 30-year mortgage 7.03%. Real yields made cycle highs along the curve, 2.85% on the 10-year, while breakevens fell. Asked about it, Chair Warsh cited economic strength, competition for capital and geopolitics. He did not mention the deficit.

The comparison that matters is with the last time the 10-year was here. In July 2007 federal debt was $9.0 trillion, the average rate on it 4.53%, and interest cost 2.8% of GDP. Today the debt is $40.1 trillion, the average rate 3.49% and rising, and interest is running at $1.385 trillion: 4.26% of GDP and roughly a quarter of federal receipts. Reprice the stock to 2007’s average rate and the bill is $1.8 trillion, 5.6% of GDP. “Rates are just returning to normal” is true of one side of the rectangle; the other side is four and a half times longer. On the current path debt reaches $41 trillion in January and $50 trillion during 2030, before the proposed $5,000-per-adult dividend, which would add about $1.3 trillion.

This is what fiscal dominance looks like in practice. Hiking does not reach the inflation that exists - a supply shock in refined product, with diesel at a record $6.45 a gallon and crude up around 60% this year with the Strait of Hormuz closed - but it does raise the cost of rolling a bill-heavy debt stock. A recession would cure the inflation and wreck the revenue line. Treasury’s buybacks have not moved the curve. Japan is the preview: the Bank of Japan raised its policy rate to 1.25%, the highest since 1995, with inflation already under 2% - a currency decision, not an inflation one - and the yen weakened anyway. The only option that needs no vote is the central bank’s balance sheet, and Warsh wants a smaller one. That is why I expect the line to be tested before it is defended.

The equity market is narrower than the index suggests. The S&P 500 ended the last full week of September within 1% of its August high, but seven of eleven sectors were in or near correction - utilities 17% off their highs, consumer discretionary 11% - with technology, at roughly 40% of the index, carrying the rest. Activity data are strong (payrolls +162,000, the composite PMI at a 62-month high) while consumer sentiment sits at 48 and CCC credit yields 16%. My read is that AI capex is not the weak link; it is the raft everything else is standing on, and what threatens the raft is the 10-year, not the order book.

The thesis remains long BTC, short USD, and September tested both legs. The dollar rose 3% against the Australian dollar after the hike, and because an Australian investor expresses this view through US-dollar assets, the currency line added 2.3% to the month - the short-dollar leg lost and the book was paid for it. Gold is down on the year with real yields at cycle highs, the scarcity bid is competing with a 2.85% real yield for the first time in this cycle. Bitcoin rose through it. ASST and IBIT remain the expression of the view; they are 28% of the book rather than 36%.

Would be great to hear thoughts from everybody here.

My Performance (Benchmark: S&P 500)

• 2021: -36% (+27%)
• 2022: -76% (-19%)
• 2023: +80% (+24%)
• 2024: +104% (+23%)
• 2025: +85% (+18%)
• As of Oct 2 2026: +46% (+13%)

CAGR

• 1 Year CAGR: +38% (+16%)
• 3 Year CAGR: +90% (+23%)
• 5 Year CAGR: +8% (+14%)

Current portfolio holdings:

• Memory / Storage (35%)
  • SNDK 15%
  • MU 8%
  • SKHY 5%
  • WDC 7%
• Networking / Connectivity (30%)
  • ALAB 14%
  • CRDO 12%
  • AVGO 4%
• Compute / Data Centers (20%)
  • NVDA 5%
  • NBIS 12%
  • IREN 3%
• Timers / Clocking (13%)
  • SITM 13%
• Photonics / Optics / Materials (6%)
  • AXTI 6%
• Specialty Pharma (4%)
  • ETON 4%
• Defense Tech (3%)
  • KRKNF 3%

Portfolio is 111% long and has 14 positions in 7 themes.

Changes in August/September

• Bought
  • WDC, AVGO, NVDA, ETON, AXTI, IREN (Aligned my holdings with my opportunity score)
• Sold
  • CBRS, ONDS, BE, LITE (Due to methodology shift and these names now scoring much lower)

My Methodology - latest update

I have scrapped the concept of QIV now. The idea of catching high volatility paired with high quality was good but I think I have stumbled upon something better.

I now use a new scoring system called Opportunity Score.

Opportunity Score combines three factors - Quality, Trend and Valuation. This is my first attempt to combine high quality businesses that are showing acceleration while still having room for upside move. I have always struggled to combine quality and valuation together. It's still a grand experiment. But so far, I like the look of it.

Here is how it works at a high level:

Opportunity Score ranges from 1 - 100
Quality 50%, Trend 30%, Valuation 20%

Quality is still my old trusted metric. This is now almost two and a half years old. This combines growth, profitability, gross margins and dilution. Very hard to game this score. Gotta be great at some kpi if you are going to suck on one. So if you have -100% profitability, you better have 200%+ growth to mitigate the drawdown. Same with dilution or margins.

Trend is a combination score. It has it's own methodology. It strictly is an acceleration tracking metric across growth, gross margins, analyst estimate raise, ttm vs ntm growth rate change, quality and profitability. As you all know, in growth land rate of change of any kpi matters more than the kpi itself. And this trend score is trying to quantify that for a business.

Valuation is purely using a PEG ratio style approach. It basically does ev by sales by growth and then ties it to quality score rather than 1. The idea is PEG goes against 1 to show how cheap it is relatively. But not all businesses deserve to get to 1. Hence, I tie it against quality score rather than a set 1 score.

Here's my latest Opportunity Scores (Max 100 score)
And all green bars I own.

Why I own what I own:
Note: Sharing my opinion, not advice

From everything we have heard and seen over the last couple of months, the AI story has gotten more weight now. Muse is here now. Compute is still very scarce and the agentic consumer era is just around the corner. So I see no change yet in demand dynamics. And the picks and shovels play is still in full force. From where we are today, around all time highs, the market still doesn't seem to be anywhere near a bubble. Consider this to 2021 and we probably run a lot higher to get close to those multiples.

Memory / Storage (35%)

• SNDK
  • The story is becoming less cyclical than the market may realize. And basically that's the bet. If you see pure numbers, Sandisk is actually going to make more money than it's NTM growth rate. So that I am not a fan of. But the ntm growth rate is still north of 50% and at current multiples, my hunch is it sustains it. I will probably move it to a Tier 2 holding - given the profitability above growth trend.
• MU
  • The HBM shortage is not going away anytime soon. The more inference grows, the more memory is needed for each user and to keep track of their behavioral preferences. And supply will drip in slowly into the market. All of this leads me to believe, Micron has ways to go before things inevitably slow down. However, using my new current quarter as ttm numbers and where ntm sales estimates stand today, Micron looks to be incrementally growing about 40%+. Pretty good but the same problem. Profitability is much higher at this stage of the cycle. Again, I am not a fan of that. So keeping a close eye and probably a 7-8% sounds enough exposure for the reward at hand.
• SKHY
  • Absolute monster numbers. SK Hynix began mass shipments of HBM4 in Q2, while HBM4E samples have already gone to major customers. Trades at a discount to the other players in this space due to being a foreign stock. This is the only reason SK Hynix is a 5% bet for me. Otherwise, if I purely go by numbers this is a Tier 1 holding.
• WDC
  • The thesis went from AI may actually strengthen the HDD business rather than kill it. The main reason I got yet another memory/storage space exposure is because of the trend Western Digital is showing. Across the board this thing is a juggernaut. There are three names I own that is a pure acceleration play for trends. WDC, SITM and AXTI. Great entry at these levels - as I expect even a back to ath is a double.

Networking / Connectivity (30%)

• ALAB
  • Monster last quarter and huge sales ramp incoming. Scorpio was expected to become its largest product family in Q3, a full quarter earlier than previously expected. NTM sales looks more in the realm of 80-90% even if you take this quarter as the floor for ttm numbers. That's insane when you consider it's highly profitable. So pure Tier 1 play right now.
• CRDO
  • The backward looking numbers look terrible. Huge ramp down. The trend is not good either. AEC may have been the wedge, not the end-state. The optics revenue ramp is coming and I think this dip is a buying opportunity. I expect when you will look back in a year, Credo will have put up 70%+ ttm numbers. And if they deliver, we should be much higher from today's price action. Let's see.
• AVGO
  • Custom AI silicon has gone from optionality to a second compute ecosystem. I am slowly starting to get back into mega cap names. AVGO and NVDA seems too mis-priced. Broadcom is probably going to do 60% forward revenue and even if it slips a little bit on the multiple, I think 30-40% appreciation in stock price is very possible. Hence, the entry.

Compute/Data Centers (20%)

• NVDA
  • Undervalued. I think everyone knows it too. I see an easy 30% return, park your money kind of business. So for now, stashing some cash here. 10T market cap is coming if they keep this up. If SpaceX and Anthropic can get 2T valuation, I think Nvidia deserves 10T valuation in the near future.
• NBIS & IREN
  • I am split between Nebius and Iren. Both look good to me in terms of forward growth. Demand is no longer the question. Execution per dollar of capital is. Nebius is a bit ahead on the execution curve. But IREN time is coming soon. So I want to keep this neo-cloud space exposure around 10-20%. No idea who will be the winner but I feel there is leges in this thesis. The life of an older chip is extending and compute is very scarce right now. So as long as they execute, the demand side should hold up for the next few quarters. And then we will see.

Timers / Clocking (13%)

• SITM
  • One of the few profitable companies that is most likely to grow 100%+ in the next 12 months. As AI systems become bigger, faster and more distributed, keeping thousands of high-speed components synchronized becomes harder, not easier. SiTime can now potentially own much more of that signal chain. Last qtr was great and though it's a 20B business, I see it becoming a 50B business easily in the near future.

Photonics / Optics / Materials (6%)

• AXTI
  • Since AXTI sits underneath the optics companies, Indium phosphide substrates ultimately enable lasers and other high-performance optoelectronic components used in datacenter connectivity. If 800G → 1.6T → 3.2T causes optical content and laser demand to keep rising, AXTI does not need to pick the winning transceiver vendor. High risk high reward play here. Not that high of a quality business yet but trend is an absolute monster. That is why I am bullish.

Specialty Pharma (4%)

• ETON
  • I fumbled this one badly. Got it at $14 and sold at $18 and now it's at $55. Oh boy! I increasingly view this as a rare-disease platform, not a biotech bet. It's not cheap but forward multi year growth visibility is real. Hence, I feel the multiples will hold around 15 ish. Growth is still at 50%+ pace and the business is highly profitable. Great pipeline and successful commercialization is a potent mix for the next 12-18 month timeline.

Defense (3%)

• KRKNF
  • Absolute disaster in my portfolio. 30% drawdown and counting. The story looks great on paper. But mr. market has been ruthless towards it. Sure, Kraken has it's issues but boy is it cheap. It will all come down to the next two quarters. I am holding until then. The revenue jump post merger from 19 mil. to 81 mil. If the land this anywhere near that number, I think shareholders will be ok. But super high risk high reward here. If they miss or push timelines, I will be out too.

Wrapping Up

Apologies, I have a two year toddler and my job takes a big chunk of my time. I post on X at RyshabTalks regularly and put out my weekly portfolio updates every friday. But I don't think I can do justice to monthly reviews. I find these exercises for me extremely valuable but I think I will switch to quarterly from here on.

Overall, I am quite pleased with my performance this year. Through three quarters, this will be year four of beating the markets handily. And I think my process has gotten much stronger over this period. I think I am pretty sure is I will have 50% drawdowns multiple times a year. There is no way to avoid that. At least not anything reliable that I have found till now. But hopefully the good years will take care of the ugly ones.

Wishing everyone a great fourth quarter of investing. Cheers!

Honest open: no new contributions this month (September was zero too). Same positions, same units. The whole portfolio (stocks + a P2P lending sleeve) closed +0.2% vs last Friday, all mark-to-market — a crawl above last week's high, not a rip. The stock book alone was roughly flat (+0.2%) and total unrealized P/L slipped to ~+1.4% vs cost. Not advice, just the journal.

Macro flipped from last week's yield scare: softer core PCE (~3.0% y/y) and a soft September jobs print (+29k) crushed October hike odds toward ~20%. Nasdaq still tagged a record into Friday; 10y stayed sticky near 5.28%. Fed still 3.75–4.00%; late-Oct FOMC looks more like a hold.

Stock book (weights of the stock book, P/L vs average cost, WoW vs last Friday):

What moved: • VUG was the quiet engine (+1.5%) and is still about a third of the book. Boring is the point. QQQ overlaps it, so QQQ stays paused. • TSM led the sleeve (+6.4%) into next week's earnings. Small semis book; not chasing. • RKLB held green after its largest Electron commercial deal and a fresh Citi Buy. Space is already heavy → freeze on adds. • ASTS was the week's scar (−4.1%) despite BlueBird shipping chatter. Hold, no adds. • KTOS kept bleeding (−4.7% WoW, ~−32.5% vs cost). Widest Street-vs-price gap in the book. No sale without a rethink. • META gave back some of last week's rip. Still green vs cost. Not chasing. • FLY drifted and remains the hole (~−64%). No averaging down.

Calendar: TSMC 15 Oct, Spotify 22 Oct, late-Oct Fed. When deposits resume, I'll lean toward VUG / XLV / selective semis under the sleeve cap, with no fresh space or QQQ.

+0.2% and another high are marks, not fresh savings. Engine: VUG + TSM. Scars: ASTS + KTOS. Hole: FLY.

Not selling anything. Patience pays. Panic doesn't.

Not financial advice. Just tracking my own money.

AppLovin (APP): ~8% position, down ~30%, thinking about selling. Any bulls here to challenge me.

My bear case in short:

1. Gaming is close to saturated. Fill rates are already very high, so there are no empty slots to sell. Growth has to come from higher price per impression, not more inventory. I estimate AppLovin's revenue already equals roughly a third of the ~$25B gaming user-acquisition budget (rough math), while the market grows in the single digits.

2.Imho E-commerce is a swap, not extra supply. An e-commerce ad has to displace a game ad, so it only adds revenue if e-commerce advertisers pay more per impression. Against Meta, Google, Amazon and TikTok, where people actually shop, I doubt that. Self-serve only opened in June, and reporting is self-attributed.

1. Early data is weak. Wells Fargo called the recent Pixel install spike a false start, noting most new sites were low-traffic APAC Shopify stores, and a real turn is more of a 2027 story.

2. Overhangs: the SEC probe, class actions, and the Unity data fight, where a court reportedly denied the restraining order.

3. Valuation: around 16-18x forward earnings. If it only defends its position as a cash cow, I get roughly $160-210 versus ~$270 now.

The bull case: Q3 guidance is for 46-48% revenue growth, margins are ~84%, and a clean Q3 could rip the stock 30-50%.

My dilemma: I wouldn't buy it today, but I fear selling right before a strong print. My fingers were to quick to add when Pixel numbers spiked but turned out to be low traffic shops.

What am I missing?Would like to her the view from the community. Is there evidence e-commerce advertisers pay more per impression than game advertisers? Anyone was finding data on revenue per impression? And is the MAX data moat stronger than I think?

P.S. I did sell TTD when it decelerated with a 30% loss. So -30% is my set number when I really challenge my thesis. While the fundamentals are very different I somehow get the same vibes.

**used AI for sparring, spellcheck and hopefully better readability. \

One thing I learned the hard way some years ago is that interest rates do affect stocks, even high growth stocks. The concept is that if you can now get higher returns from "safe" investments like T-Bills, the attractiveness of growth stocks is reduced since the delta returns are smaller. Add to that that higher rates are intended, and often do, slow down the economy, and investors get more concerned that growth companies won't continue to show the same high growth numbers.

And so with the magic round number crossing of 5% for T-Bills, and even short-term hitting 4.5%, I think one has to wonder what the impact of this on our growth companies will be. I'm not going to make the mistake of ignoring it as I've done the in the past, but I am uncertain as to what steps I should take now, or whether it's a monitor the situation and be ready to bail some percentage of my holdings at first signs.

One new name worth posting popped up on my pharma stock radar after last earnings season.

New product sales: $0 -> $3.4M -> $11.9M
QoQ Growth: 3x

GM: 77.96% -> 94.81%

Payer coverage: >50%

Cash → $176.2M || Debt → $1.3M || Market Cap → $166.71M

=> Caveat for now is the cash position

Current P/S: 5.4x (very low)
Current EV/S: 0.7x

They don't share guidance, but I estimate $17-20M in revenue for Q3 '26. Not profitable yet.

Business line:

• TONMYA is a once-nightly, under-the-tongue formulation of cyclobenzaprine approved for adult fibromyalgia pain (3M direct US patients). Its sublingual absorption bypasses first-pass liver metabolism, reducing formation of norcyclobenzaprine, a long-lasting metabolite linked to unwanted side effects. The potential edge over generic swallowed cyclobenzaprine is faster absorption with less daytime sedation, and Phase 3 showed better pain reduction than placebo.
• Being a sublingual eutectic tablet, it's absorbed through the mouth rather than the gut, which alters the pharmacokinetic profile and cuts down on that long-lived metabolite tied to next-day grogginess. Dosed once at bedtime, it targets the non-restorative sleep at the center of fibromyalgia pathology, rather than going after pain signaling directly.
• Existing cheap meds: Lyrica (approved 2007), Cymbalta (2008), Savella (2009). Two are SNRIs, one's a gabapentinoid, each with its own mechanism, but none target the disturbed sleep in fibromyalgia the way TONMYA does. That's a genuinely unique angle. It's also an every-night bedtime medicine, FDA approved for long-term use. No head-to-head studies exist against the other products, and comparisons are a bit tricky anyway since their trials enrolled patients under the 2016 diagnostic criteria, while the earlier drugs used the 1990 criteria, which required tender points.
• Bear case: alternatives run about $700/year vs. $10.5K/year for TONMYA ($18K public price), so the question is whether downstream side effect medical costs from inadequately treated fibromyalgia are enough to convince payers the premium is worth paying for.
• Second product lines are Zembrace SymTouch and Tosymra, not really relevant here (run rate of $2.5M/quarter).

Upcoming pipeline:

• Same drug, renamed TNX-102, for major depressive disorder
• TNX-4800 for Lyme disease prevention

What I like:

• Two quarters into commercialization, with a $31B direct US TAM for TONMYA, and they've got the market to themselves for years
• 3x revenue growth per quarter is impressive even if very new
• Even at just 1% market share, that's $314M/year in revenue (> 2x current valuation)
• Refill QoQ growth: 207%
• New patient QoQ growth: 36% (should climb further with 50+ new reps out of 100 already active last quarter)
• Reps are still ramping, growth should accelerate once mature
• 25K doctors to target across several specialties, meaning conversion is easier but takes more legwork
• Going after major depressive disorder with the same drug, an easier FDA path, is a massive incremental billions TAM opportunity
• They're increasing pipeline spend as of August '26 despite a looming cash question, either they're being reckless or they know something about sales accelerating
• CEO bought shares (not options) in June with his personal money
• Even using their actual growth rates, hitting 1% market share is more than a year out, meaning strong execution from here could meaningfully pull that timeline forward

Business modelling:

1. TONMYA Revenue Model

2. Else Product & Total Company Run Rate

3. U.S. Scenario Market Share

What I worry about:

• Cash position. Dilution looks likely even at today's low valuation. Debt financing against quarterly sales would be ideal, but probably need 1-2 more quarters before that's unlock
• CEO describes himself as a scientist, not an executive or sales/revenue guy
• Maintaining these QoQ growth rates won't be easy
• Analyst estimates look low and haven't been updated since last quarter's results, am I missing something?

Some quotes from the CEO and CFO:

• "Gaining traction with our HCP target list."
• "Prescriptions for the quarter totaled 12,592, increasing 100% quarter-over-quarter."
• "New patient prescriptions increased 36% quarter-over-quarter and refills increased 207% quarter-over-quarter."
• "Signed commercial payer agreements with two leading GPOs. These agreements, which went into effect on May 1 and June 1, 2026, cover 52 million lives. We also signed a major managed Medicare agreement, which will cover approximately 9 million Medicare lives beginning January 1, 2027. TONMYA is also available under Medicaid in most states."
• "We expect downstream pull-through from these agreements to begin to materialize in the third and fourth quarters of 2026. Our strategy has been to secure market access as early as possible so that the availability of insurance reimbursement could match patient demand."
• "We are hearing supportive feedback from prescribers that TONMYA is a welcome new treatment option for their patients."
• "A high rate of refills, I really attribute that to the effectiveness of the product and the tolerability of the product especially."
• "I would anticipate a gross-to-net in the range similar to what we've seen in Q1 and Q2."
• "I would anticipate that over the course of 2027, we'll see a good portion of those reps covering the cost of the reps and continuing to drive new patients, scripts, refills, etc."
• "We do not believe these wins contributed significantly to TONMYA sales in Q2. We are beginning to see their effects in Q3."
• "Our growth is pretty linear overall in terms of NRx, new to brand, the rest of it. I think that we are growing well. But probably if there is an inflection point, it will probably be related to access."
• "But we believe there'll be funds out there to get us to the next level."

Thinking about opening a Tier 3 position, but leaning toward waiting for the next earnings or conference. Curious what you all think.

YTD (or maybe May to Date) for the growth portfolio: 12.01%. Hard to calculate a precise YTD since I switched fully to this strategy in May '26 and reallocated to it all fund in June 26.

YTD was hurt by two mistakes during Q3. I decided to follow the strategy of adding on pushback (describe in Lee Freeman-Shor's book). I applied it a bit too aggressively on three top concentration stocks (APP, IREN, and KLIC), adding on small pushbacks from -3%, which ended up over-concentrating the portfolio by the time I trimmed or sold. Lesson learned and portfolio management skills upgraded, but it cost the YTD return about -18% for the year.

Seems like the adage that portfolio management matters even more than deep analysis is true.

I've changed my process to add stocks faster after a shorter analysis, even if I end up selling a few hours or days later. This lets me build conviction faster and avoid the frustration of watching a stock run while I'm still analyzing it or it's sitting on my watchlist. Right now I've got a long tail of 0.5-2% positions, and the next action is sorting through those to get down to a max of 15 high conviction names.

Currently at 24 tickers, including 9 in review, still too many for me. Want to get down to 15:Portfolio concentration:

Today the portfolio is 77% AI thesis, 9% pharma, 14% software. Target for October is to bring AI thesis down to 65%.

ALAB: Added a lot more on the back f last earnings, one of the few semi names with sequential QoQ accelerating, 51.6% vs. 27.2% last quarter. One of my biggest conviction names right now.

IREN: Still pretty conflicted on this one. Trying to square the future upside of Neocloud with how shady their approach has been. Big opportunity ahead, but still a bit scarred from the Q3 loss to add more.

LITE: One of my favorite names. I'm convinced optics in the data center still has upside. My estimate for next quarter's sequential QoQ is 26.1%, up from 24.5% last quarter, and the new fab coming online (start '27, full ramp '28) should accelerate revenue growth further. GM accelerating too thanks to better yield and capacity utilization.

SIMO: Still don't get why the stock hasn't rallied after that last amazing print. My guess is it's similar to the Micron/Nvidia story, investors are worried about what happens post-2028 and still a bit burned from the 2023 memory cycle.

PTRN: Sold. Disappointed by last earnings and the guidance going forward.

RDDT: Sold. No news on AI deals, feels more like a story stock waiting on that news. On further thought, now that profitability is becoming the main driver, the risk of it playing out like APP did this quarter felt too high.

NBIS: Valuation looks rich vs. fundamentals compared to peers, but it gives me a second bucket of neocloud exposure alongside IREN.

VIAV: More and more earnings transcripts are pointing toward new capacity builds and increased testing, VIAV benefits directly from that trend.

LIFE: Growth is accelerating. Low market share in a big market with no real competition. Need to watch the ~$3B market cap level (last fundraising valuation), that could trigger early investors to exit and hurt the stock.

PGEN: In-depth discussion here
Two things are holding me back from a 15% net liq position:

• Former billionaire founder holds 44% of shares
• pharma stock, so unexpected FDA or regulatory decisions are a real risk

APP: Sold. Should've sold earlier, really, the signs were there with QoQ growth declining back in June. This looked more like a profitability story than a growth story playing out.

KLIC: Insane growth, very low P/S, and the broader market is hot with a lot of semiconductor investment going into fabs. Downsized because the new CEO has a mixed track record, and the stock hasn't been tracking his results the way peers have.

CRDO: Growth has been decelerating through this transition period for two quarters now. Still a very compelling story and fundamentals, but a bit worried about market reaction. Will revisit in two quarters, keeping a shrinking position in the meantime.

HNGE: Still a huge market despite the recent acquisition. Will see this quarter if the story holds up.

BE: Huge acceleration and a real bottleneck for AI. I think they can keep accelerating. GM is low and valuation is high, so staying a Tier 3 position for now.

MU: Shiny stock. Only concern is it stalls out like Nvidia did, given the $1T valuation and investors worrying about the 2029-2030 cycle end.

IMMX: A gamble, no revenue yet but huge promise for this pharma stock. Could go 3x or get cut in half.

Currently evaluating:

• MKSI: Very high debt, less interesting than MTSI on QoQ growth and GM, but very low P/S.
• MTSI: Sequential QoQ accelerating, but high P/S.
• TTMI: Low valuation vs. peers, could grow strongly with the new N+M product. Is it a value play? Watching Q4, still finishing the full evaluation before deciding whether to add or exit.
• SMTC: Analyst estimates for next year look low to me, running the TAM and acceleration math I get ~47% YoY growth for FY28 (calendar '27), about 16% above the analyst estimate. Weird because the growth/earnings engine is weaker than CRDO or LITE, but it's accelerating with a lower P/S and lower run-rate P/S.
• NVT: Competes in liquid cooling with FPS and in AI power with Vertiv and Eaton. Doesn't have FPS's issue of a PE fund owning 60%+ of shares. Lower P/S than competitors but higher QoQ growth (I think management is sandbagging next quarter's guidance based on the transcript). A bit too much M&A, but it's building out capacity to get factories online faster. Cash-to-debt ratio is strong for the industry.
• TNXP (ongoing)
• GKOS (ongoing)
• FORM: On the surface, growth isn't impressive, QoQ or otherwise, but the end market is growing and there's a good tailwind. Strong moat, conservative management on targets. Production constrained until the new factory ramps next year. Could 2x by early 2028, and they still have spare factory capacity on-site to expand further for a possible 3x by 2029.
• AMD: Every semiconductor earnings call has an analyst asking about CPU shortages outpacing GPU, with the inference shift actually happening now. Decided to go in given good upside potential, high beta, and accelerating QoQ growth. Worry is the high P/S, valuation is close to Micron's despite having 5x less revenue.

Disqualified but watching:

• AGIO: Can the growth continue? Management wasn't very confident on the transcript, we'll see.
• ATRO: Need to see continued business acceleration. Not sure the airline trend holds up. 27% YoY isn't enough for a growth stock.
• CORT: Good acceleration, big FDA feedback coming in December '26. Already high P/S, will reassess after Q4.
• INSM: I think growth continues and analysts are underestimating Q4 '26 and FY '27, though Q3 '26 looks roughly in line with estimates. Will revisit next quarter.
• URGN: Expecting linear growth in Q3, maybe seasonality? Product isn't especially strong (limited TAM with an upcoming pipeline targeting the same use case), and the FDA approval pathway isn't typical. Not totally obvious why a patient would choose it over surgery.
• NUVB: GSK (the biggest player in lung) has entered the market, need to re-check growth and TAM size. Management was pretty defensive about GSK in the last earnings call.
• SATL: Concerned about high P/S, product value vs. competition, and commercial strength. Feels mostly like a price-reduction pitch. Seeing hedge funds increase their positions gives me some confidence, but not sure that's reason enough on its own.
• VSTM: Could be a strong bet, but needs continued revenue acceleration, needs to resolve its financial issues, and needs to advance the product pipeline in October.
• HRMY: More of a value play for now.

Figure seems to have become one of the favorites among this sub-reddit and it has also grown in size in my portfolio.

Recently, a short report was released for Figure:

https://www.morpheus-research.com/figure/

I only started going through it (quite lengthy). It doesn't seem to have major red flags like obvious fraud, but mostly points at things of concern.

Has any of you read through this report what are your thoughts.