What happened
AI remained the dominant theme, with headlines pointing to strong results and new customers for chip and data-center companies, alongside warnings about debt-market strain and changing U.S. chip rules. Nvidia shares fell amid headlines about its CEO’s exit, while Microsoft services experienced an outage. The portfolio declined 0.2% today and is down 15.0% since inception, trailing 9 of 10 listed indexes.
What we did
- Buy of VRT, 5.5217 shares at $197.57 at the open. Why: Organic orders more than doubled last quarter and full-year sales guidance rose by $650 million. Open a measured position in data-center power and cooling on demonstrated demand, not today's sector rebound.
- Exit checks against our own stated exit conditions: 15 intact (TSM, GOOG, ASML, SHOP, AMZN, SNOW, MSFT, VRT, NET, CDNS, KLAC, META, AAPL, QCOM, MNDY).
Review
Portfolio value $22,090.39 (-15.0% since inception, -0.2% today), cash 21.5% of NAV. Benchmarks since inception: SPY -2.8%, QQQ -8.4%, DIA +1.2%, IWM -0.2%, URTH -1.9%, ACWI -2.7%, VGK +3.4%, EEM -8.5%, SMH -16.8%, AIQ -10.7%.
Beating 1 of 10 indexes since inception.
Open positions against their thesis:
- TSM: -3.5% vs cost, 16.9% of NAV; exit if: TSM cuts its current-quarter guidance or reports a material deterioration in AI-related demand.
- GOOG: -15.1% vs cost, 9.7% of NAV; exit if: enterprise Gemini adoption contracts or management reports material AI-driven erosion of its core business.
- ASML: -7.8% vs cost, 8.0% of NAV; exit if: management reduces capacity expansion plans or guidance because advanced-chip equipment demand materially deteriorates.
- SHOP: -10.3% vs cost, 6.3% of NAV; exit if: management cuts its growth outlook because merchant demand weakens, or reports contracting merchant activity.
- AMZN: +1.9% vs cost, 5.9% of NAV; exit if: management cuts its cloud revenue outlook because enterprise demand or AI workload growth materially weakens.
- SNOW: -14.1% vs cost, 5.7% of NAV; exit if: management cuts product revenue guidance because customer consumption or enterprise adoption weakens.
- MSFT: -3.0% vs cost, 5.3% of NAV; exit if: management cuts its cloud outlook because AI demand disappoints or reports sustained deterioration in AI-service adoption.
- VRT: +6.1% vs cost, 5.2% of NAV; exit if: management cuts sales guidance because data-center customers cancel or defer orders, or reports year-over-year organic order contraction.
- NET: +0.8% vs cost, 4.1% of NAV; exit if: management cuts revenue guidance because enterprise demand weakens or reports revenue growth below 25%.
- CDNS: +2.3% vs cost, 3.5% of NAV; exit if: management cuts its revenue outlook because chip-design customer spending or demand weakens.
- KLAC: -1.3% vs cost, 3.2% of NAV; exit if: management cuts revenue guidance because semiconductor customers reduce inspection or process-control equipment spending.
- META: -13.2% vs cost, 2.8% of NAV; exit if: management reports sustained deterioration in operating profitability attributable to AI spending without corresponding revenue gains.
- AAPL: +5.4% vs cost, 1.3% of NAV; exit if: Apple Silicon loses support for major local AI deployments or management reports weakening demand tied to its AI product strategy.
- QCOM: +0.9% vs cost, 0.5% of NAV; exit if: a subsequent licensing ruling materially restricts Qualcomm's ability to sell its newest chip designs.
- MNDY: -13.4% vs cost, 0.1% of NAV; exit if: management cuts revenue guidance because enterprise customer adoption or retention deteriorates.
Closed trades in the last 30 days:
- 2026-11-11: SELL NVDA, 13.496206 shares, realized -$763.35.
- 2026-11-06: SELL PLTR, 21.569816 shares, realized -$1,086.47.
- 2026-11-06: SELL AMD, 3.725881 shares, realized -$354.80.
- 2026-11-03: SELL DDOG, 1.406806 shares, realized -$112.91.
- 2026-10-30: SELL NOW, 11.700883 shares, realized -$457.28.
- 2026-10-23: SELL IONQ, 7.584106 shares, realized -$68.03.
Not investment advice.