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WEBSITE AND PASSWORD LINKS

Website Link: thesimpleside.news

Password Link: https://thesimpleside.substack.com/p/website-thesimplesidenews-password

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Website Overview

ALL OF THE FOLLOWING IS TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ATTACHED VIDEO — PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO TO SEE VISUALS

We’re going to be taking a look at the most recent version of the thesimpleside.news website that I have been sending out and mentioning, and linking to, and all of those good things. So, you can kinda understand what this looks like, how you can use it, and everything in between. So obviously, this is what the website looks like. Our Substack, which is where most of you have found us and subscribed, and where you find all of our newsletters and things like that, that is found at thesimpleside.substack.com.

And so, that’s what this is, and if you have read our most recent article, you might have gone through and seen this. Some quick notes and other information are here as well. And then eventually, down here at the bottom, I link to, you know, our macro page and stuff like that, and I’ve included a link here. But regardless, I wanna talk to you about how to log in, join, et cetera.

So let me real quick reset this back to the main page.

Homepage and Macro Snapshot

If you just come to the website and you’re not logged in, you’re a free subscriber, or if you’ve just found this and you’re wondering what’s going on, this is what you are going to be presented with. It’s the main page here, and I’ll scroll down and then we’ll jump into some of the individual, I guess, links or tabs within the website that you can go and look at, and I’ll help you understand how some of these work. So we’ll start off here. You get a quick macro look.

This is just telling you the current macro rate regime that we are in. So right over here, you’ve got a look at the 2-year yield and the 10-year yield, where both of those are sitting. And then I’m telling you what state these rates are in. What’s the current regime that we’re in?

Right now, it’s a bear flattener. And then of course, I’ve got the date for you here as well. That is as of October 6th. Now, I’m recording this as of October 6th.

It’s after the markets and everything have closed, and so that’s why we have it updated as of today. I’ll show you a bit more about that later. And then very quickly, if you just wanna know what’s going on and what this current regime means, this bear flattener regime, it just tells you right here what it means. The 2-year yield has been rising faster than the 10-year yield, and then it tells you for the bond market what that means.

Well, it’s bearish for the bond market, and it typically means that bond prices are falling, led by shorter maturities. So all that means is bond prices and interest rates are inversely correlated. So as rates rise, bond prices fall. As rates decline, bond prices rise.

And so that’s telling you this is bearish for the bond market because rates are rising. Now over here on the stock market side of things, you can see it’s also bearish. This is saying it’s usually negative for stocks, particularly rate-sensitive assets. The reason for that is obviously these companies have to borrow money to invest and grow.

Now, if they can borrow cheaply, they’re able to invest and grow at a lower cost, and they’re able to sacrifice less for growth. For example, if the borrowing rate is 2%, and I know that I can go and borrow at 2% and create a 5% return, I should do that as much as I possibly can because I’m making that 3% spread between my 2% borrowing cost and the 5% return that I’m going to make. However, if I can only make 5% and it costs me 5.27% to borrow, all of a sudden that growth no longer makes sense because the borrowing cost exceeds the return. And the same thing goes for other companies.

If they can borrow at 2% and return 10%, well, there’s an 8% spread that they’re making. But if that goes up to five, now all of a sudden they’re only making a 5% spread, which is much less, which obviously means that their long-term growth rate at that point is going to be a little bit lower, just because they’re not gonna be able to put as much cash into growth while still adding as much to the bottom line. So, this is just a quick explainer.

Live Portfolios and Weekly Movers

Then of course, I have a few of my live portfolios showing up right here. Of course, we’ll jump into each of these a little bit more later. We have our flagship fund, and then it tells you a bit about the portfolio. This is an annual portfolio.

It’s picked on January 1 and held through December 31. Currently, we have 20 active holdings, and like I said, it’s an annual rebalance. Then of course, you get your year-to-date returns right here, up 20%. This is a little off from what our actual returns are, and I’ll explain a bit about why that is here in a second.

Again, we have our monthly combined portfolio. We just rolled out some new picks for this. Some of those are doing extremely well, which we needed. We had a rough month last month with these.

So, some of these are doing very well, and it tells you here how this works. We actually have two different sleeves plus a rolling three-month small/mid-cap sleeve that’s all invested in this portfolio. It’s rebalanced monthly, like I said, and right now we have 15 active holdings. At most, I think we would allow 30 holdings in this portfolio at a time.

Right now, we just have 15. And then again, you’ve got your year-to-date return here, up 19.53%. Then we have this InsiderEdges.com monthly portfolio. This is a portfolio that we manage and run for the InsiderEdges.com team, and I guess I could probably pull that up real quick.

Yeah, so this is their website. Obviously, they’ve got a bunch of different stuff, premium portfolios and things of that nature that you can go and look at. And so they show all of their individual quarters and what the returns were and how it was versus the SPY and all of that stuff. So you can see in 2025, the portfolio was up 21.7%.

The SPY was up 26.6%, so it trailed the SPY. And you can see that across every year, all of the historical stock picks. Needless to say, we just manage that portfolio on this website as of now. And then we have a new portfolio that I have just added.

These are monthly picks that are held for a quarter. Again, this is brand new, so if you are looking for a consistent quarterly holding portfolio, if you like holding things for a couple of months, this is gonna be a great thing for you to look at. And I’ll talk a bit more about what we’re doing here with this, “dirt cheap portfolio.” If we scroll down, we can see current weekly movers for each portfolio. So you can see here we’ve got the flagship fund.

It’s up 1.41% so far this week, and it’ll tell you here, October 5 through October 6. So obviously, today’s Tuesday, yesterday was Monday, and that is why we’re just seeing those two days so far. And then again, top three performers, bottom three performers, and you know, you can click into any of these and we’ll jump into that again later, like I said. Then we have our monthly combined portfolio.

Again, top three, bottom three, and this is one that I said, you know, we’re doing really well on this month so far. And you can see here just this week how some of these picks are performing. We’ve got stuff up almost 14% just over the past couple of days. So, really good stuff there, InsiderEdges portfolio.

And then here’s th…

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Quick Notes

Everybody, I have been gone for a little bit, but I am back with another market update, an update on portfolios, trades, and all of that stuff. We have some new stock picks that we made for our monthly portfolio, and we have some thoughts about the general market that are probably a bit contrarian. Let’s talk about it.

Like I said, welcome back to another portfolio update, a weekend update from The Simple Side. This one, of course, is coming after two weeks of hearing nothing from me, so I apologize for that. But I promise I had good reason. I was at a healthcare conference in Dallas for a while, and then I was actually moving into a new house. My wife and I are expecting our first child in March of next year, so there is a lot going on in preparation for all of those things.

Regardless, we’re back, and we’ve got a bunch of updates for you. We’re going to jump into these quickly today. I’m going to run through everything and talk about how I’m thinking about the current market. I also had a good realization over the past couple of weeks that I want to talk about. We updated our new monthly stock picks as of October 1, and we had some new quarterly picks in certain portfolios that were changed or added as well. So we’ll take a look at those.

Market Crash Signals: Don’t Worry

As always, I just want to say: if you’re concerned about a stock market crash right now, even though everybody seems to be proclaiming, “The market’s coming down, the market’s coming down. Humpty Dumpty’s on the wall,” stop worrying. I really would not be nervous or upset about it. Of course, I’m not saying that a crash could not happen. A crash could always happen. It could come at any time. There could always be a bubble that we don’t know about.

But I don’t think it’s worth sitting around waiting for a crash just because the economy looks weird. That’s not a good investment strategy. I say this to you, but this is also the realization I had over the past couple of weeks. I’m saying it to myself as well.

Price Action: Trend Is Friend

I have been heavily uninvested in general when it comes to the stock market for the majority of this year. I would say nearly 20%-30% of my investments have sat in cash or cash equivalents in some way, shape, or form, and it’s basically for the reasons that I just told you not to worry about.

I thought the economy looked rough. I thought Trump’s random decision-making, whether you agree or disagree, made things look more volatile and more risk-off, and I just thought that, in general, the market looked overvalued. I thought if you went and looked at the Buffett Indicator, Shiller P/E, Shiller forward P/E, and everything else, it all seemed so far overvalued that there was no way it could keep climbing. And now here we are, up roughly 13% so far in 2026 in the S&P 500.

Of course, I was really wrong, but I’m glad I came to this realization now. The realization is basically this, if I could sum it up: regardless of the macro or underlying conditions in the stock market, price action needs to be the thing that drives investment allocations within your portfolio. I’ll say that one more time. Regardless of the underlying macro conditions in the market, price action should drive the investment allocations within your portfolio — AKA, trend is friend.

I think it’s very important to use macro indicators in conjunction with trend to find out whether or not a sell-off has any weight to it or if we think it could be expedited for whatever reason. However, price action must remain king.

If you’re a bit confused by what I mean by price action, I’m going to use a quick example: The Trade Desk (TTD). I have a chart in the newsletter that you need to go look at. Again, thesimpleside.substack.com has all of this.

I have a chart set up of The Trade Desk year-to-date. The stock is down 76% year to date, and I marked where you likely would have bought during the course of this past year if you were ignoring the price action and ignoring the trend. Regardless of where you would have bought, you would be down. The stock has continued down over and over again and has not made a new high once this year. The highest it was came around mid-January, and it has only declined since then.

If you’re ignoring the trend, you might not be down 76% because you may have DCA’d, but you’ve continued to DCA downward. Maybe you’re down 60% or 50%, but you’re still down a ton. If you did use price action or trend and went and looked at this, you would see that there is nothing signaling any kind of momentum gain. There is no real way to look at this and say things are starting to climb again.

Conversely, if you looked at the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) this year and bought only on positive price action, there were really only a couple of months where you would have been buying, but you would be up on those prices. You would have positive returns. I put another chart in the newsletter showing SPY so far this year.

You can see that from January through maybe April, we were basically flat. We kind of wavered between 650 and 700 on SPY. Eventually, we broke down below 650, and then we started to climb. I marked where you might have bought if you were following the trend, and no matter where you would have bought along the trend after April, those positions would be in the green right now.

This is just a quick example of why we need to follow price action and why trend is, quote-unquote, “friend.” I wanted to show this to you because I’m frustrated that I didn’t catch this concept sooner. If I had, I probably would have allocated a lot more money into my portfolios earlier in the year.

That being said, I’m very excited to be sharing this with you and finding all of this out now. This will be sitting in my toolbox for future use, and I want you to have it in your toolbox as well. Trend is friend.

When the market is going down, you should not be looking to immediately buy in on any reduction in the overall value of the stock market. Just because something is going down doesn’t mean it’s going to reverse. In fact, it’s likely going to continue on the current path that it’s on, and a reversal might come later. You want to wait until that reversal happens and is solidified before you end up buying in.

Regardless, it’s something to think about.

What the Market Is Doing

Now we can talk a bit more about the actual stock market. The S&P 500 this week did nothing crazy. It probably finished Friday about 1% below its all-time high and is still up roughly 13% this year. The Nasdaq is up about 17%. Meanwhile, all you can hear about is terrible sentiment around the economy.

Consumer confidence just fell to 81.9, the lowest reading since 2014. This is something I’ve discussed before, but I’ll say it again: this can be a general signal that the broader market is beginning to sell off. Stocks continue to run while people remain convinced something terrible is right around the corner. That is something that often happens before the market actually turns. But again, this is not a predictive indicator. I wouldn’t go and sell your entire portfolio based on this. We have to wait for price action to prove to us that that’s what’s going on.

And yes, there are reasons to be nervous. The S&P 500 has had this very steep climb. We’ve seen bears getting squeezed out of specific stocks, and fear has constantly hung around even while stock prices have been rising. Those are things I watch when I’m looking at the late stages of a big run.

The market has been on a huge run. You could call it a huge run ever since 2020 or 2021 — just nothing but green. You can see it in the way the financial economy is shifting. All these copy-trading sites are popping up, and random people are making ridiculous bets and making a ton of money.

That’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s a good thing now because people are making money and everything seems to be going up, so everybody seems to be doing well. But I think this is a signal that we’re in the late stages of a big run. That doesn’t mean the big run is over. It means we’re in the late stages.

Again, nothing tells me I should wake up Monday morning and sell everything. Price action is very, very important. That price action matters more than somebody on TV screaming about a recession coming.

But when the price does start to agree with the bearish argument, that’s when the rally might start to break down. It might start to get ugly at that point, and then we’ll get a little more defensive. We might move into a more cash-equivalent position in our portfolio or shift more of our assets to cash.

For now, there is no reason to fight this rising tide. We will not win. So we’re going to continue to ride the wave. There is nothing to be extremely worried about as of Monday morning.

Economic Backdrop

With all that being said, we’ve got this weird combination in the economy. GDP grew at a 2.2% annual rate in the second quarter after 2.5% in the first quarter. Consumer spending and business investment were both positive. Americans increased spending by another roughly 1% in August, which is nowhere near something that would signal a recessionary economic environment.

So I’m not worried about any of that stuff. However, while all of that good stuff is going on, payroll growth was only 29,000 in September. Unemployment moved up to 4.2%, and wage growth slowed to 3% from a year ago.

People are still spending, businesses are still investing, and manufacturing is still expanding, but hiring is slowing a lot. Again, that shouldn’t come as any surprise with all of the new technological developments going on right now. I would call this the economy losing a bit of speed, but we’re nowhere near falling off a cliff.

The bigger problem, I think, right now is inflation and the bond market. There is a lot happening here, and it’s dangerous. I would argue that it is not very controllable at the current moment.

CPI in August was 3.4%. The Fed raised rates in September to a 3.75%-4.00% range.

Oil is not helping any of this at all. I think Brent finished the week around $102 a barrel. Hormuz is still in wartime conditions, and a tanker was hit in Oman. So there is nothing good here signaling that inflation is coming down.

Again, it’s not something that is going to bring the economy to its knees yet. Price action says, “I’m not very worried,” so we’re not going to be very worried about it either. But it is something worth watching because if things start to escalate, there are potential trade implications. We might look at going heavier into oil stocks or something along those lines. So keep watching, but this is not a wake-up-Monday-morning-and-sell-everything type of situation.

Bonds and the Macro Regime

One of the things I do want to speak about, and one of the things I said was a big deal, is bonds. That’s probably the biggest thing I’m watching right now. I would argue it is one of the most important things to be watching.

We’re in a very different environment now than we were five years ago. I have the 2-year Treasury yield marked at 4.83% and the 10-year Treasury yield sitting at 5.27%.

Over the past year, the 2-year yield has probably risen about 1.3 percentage points, while the 10-year has risen about 1.1 percentage points. That puts us in a bear flattener regime. We’ve got both yields rising, which is, of course, bad for bond prices. Go look at the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) and the PIMCO 25+ Year Zero Coupon U.S. Treasury Index ETF (ZROZ). They’ve been getting crushed.

However, the shorter yield is climbing faster. In very simple terms, the bond market is pricing more pressure into the next couple of years without pricing in an equal increase in long-term economic growth. That’s not something I want to see, and it’s not something you should want to see.

A 5.27% 10-year Treasury basically means that every stock now has to compete with a government bond paying more than 5%. You can absolutely own stocks when yields are this high, but the price you have to be willing to pay for those stocks has to change. The payoffs, borrowing costs, and everything else start to get flipped upside down when we’re looking at things like this.

I’ve got a great image in the newsletter showing a screenshot from our website, which is updated as of October 1. The data comes in a day late, so we’re not behind. It says October 1 because that’s the day we have the most recent data for.

This is generally bearish for the bond market and bearish for the stock market. Rate-sensitive assets start to have a rough time when rates get this high. We’re not seeing that specifically across the board, but we are seeing it a bit, and it’s definitely something worth paying attention to. Again, price action is not suggesting that we need to be violently worried about it. It’s simply saying: pay attention.

Our Macro Models

This is also in line with our own models. Our total macro indicator is still sitting at Hold, with a 0.134 rating. Negative 1 is the worst and positive 1 is the best, so we’re almost directly in the middle at this level.

More interestingly, the SPY-specific indicator is still a Buy — a slight, slight, slight Buy. The rating there is 0.267. Again, positive 1 is the best and negative 1 is the worst. Gold is also a Buy at 0.326, and TLT is a Sell at -0.19.

This is all in line with everything I just said in the macro discussion above. The S&P 500 has good momentum. Price action is good. Our model has it listed as a Buy right now — a slight Buy.

On the bond side of the market, we’re seeing rates rise. That means you don’t really want to be investing in bonds, and our model is saying, “Hey, this is something we might be looking at selling.”

We have our weekly allocations on our website, so you can go and look at those. We give a weekly allocation update. I ran a backtest on this a while ago and asked, given the way my model is constructed, how would we have traded X, Y, and Z? I think the model averaged about 8% returns per year.

So it is worth paying attention to if you’re looking for very safe, slow growth. It’s a great place to watch those weekly changes. I should say that the model did roughly 8% a year with much lower volatility than the S&P 500. So there was maybe about a percentage point of underperformance, but a lot less volatility.

Gold, of course, is sitting at a Buy because of inflation, oil, war uncertainties, and all of that stuff. That’s kind of your hedge. If inflation is really bad, we’re expecting certain assets to increase in value. Gold is one of those things we would expect to increase.

Again, this is just stuff to pay attention to. It doesn’t mean you need to sell everything and go buy gold. If gold were sitting at positive 1 and SPY and bonds were sitting at negative 1, I would say there is something bigger to dig into here, and maybe we do need to go heavily into gold. But we’re not seeing that.

I’ve got images throughout the newsletter for the total macro indicator over the past three months, and all that stuff is available on our website as well. You can find the website at thesimpleside.news, and the macro page is thesimpleside.news/macro.

Buffett Indicator vs. the 2-Year Treasury

I’m going to skip through a couple of the less interesting things you can check out on the website. But one of the things I don’t have on the website that I’ve included in the newsletter is something I like to watch when I see big jumps in the indicator.

This is the spread between the Buffett Indicator’s predictive eight-year return and the 2-year Treasury yield. You don’t really need to understand exactly what that means. I’ve included a screenshot in the newsletter so you can read the basic information on it.

Right now, that spread is -5.63 percentage points. On average, we’re seeing it at -1.61, so we’re much more negative than average. But if you look at the chart, what you’ll see is that when we get a big jump up in this indicator — when things level off at the bottom and then jump very quickly over a specific period of time — that typically signals that the market is starting to struggle and things are starting to decline.

A lot of times, when you see that jump up, that’s when we’ll start to see the economy move toward a recession. You’ll see that in the image I’ve included in the newsletter. Again, a sharp reversal is what we’re looking for, and you’ll see what I’m talking about when you look at the chart.

Where I Sit Right Now

I know that was a lot.

Stick with me.

I was gone for two weeks, I had a lot to say.

Basically, where I sit right now is that the ingredients are in the pot to produce a nasty sell-off. They’ve added all the ingredients: expensive stocks, rising Treasury yields, a bear flattener, oil above $100, weak hiring, and bad consumer confidence. All of that has been added into the stew.

Right now, it’s just simmering. It’s simmering, but it hasn’t bubbled over, and that’s what we’re waiting for price action to show us. When it starts to bubble over, that’s when we’re going to want to turn the heat off, if you will, and get out of some of the things in our portfolios. But we haven’t seen that happen yet.

Yes, things are saying that the market will fall at some point, but we’re waiting for price action to prove it to us, and then we’ll start to make moves. So stay comfortable where you’re seated right now. We have some time to watch things. We have some space. It’s not worth freaking out and blowing the lid just yet. We’ve got a little bit of time.

Monthly Combined Portfolio

And now we get to the good stuff: all of our portfolios and holdings. Some of these are set up and updated on the website now. Again, thesimpleside.news. You can see our live portfolios right there on the homepage, below our macro look.

Let’s jump into one that I want to throw out there for everybody for free. This is the Monthly Combined Portfolio. The total return has been 353% since, I think, early-to-mid 2021.

The average annual return over the past five years has been 35.17%, and the compounded annual growth rate is sitting at about 30%. So those are pretty impressive, pretty sizable returns.

Let’s jump into some of the additional holdings we’ve already added for October.

October Monthly Picks

The first one I want to look at is Vipshop Holdings Limited (VIPS). It’s a Chinese online discount retailer selling branded apparel.

One thing I want to remind you of is that we are not looking at long-term holdings when we look at the monthly portfolio. In this case, we’re looking for very, very cheap stocks according to things like their Graham Number, Peter Lynch fair value, and other valuation measures.

That’s what we’re looking for here. In this case, we’re not looking for trend. Trend is not something we’re paying attention to. We’re looking for companies that have gotten very, very cheap, where they might start to attract the attention of a potential acquirer or a hedge fund that comes in and buys a lot of the company. They’re almost like special situations that are just so cheap it’s hard to ignore.

Vipshop Holdings Limited (VIPS), to me, looks roughly 28%-30% undervalued across the board. When you look at its earnings power, tangible book value, projected free cash flow, price-to-sales ratio, and the Graham and Peter Lynch values, it just seems incredibly cheap.

The average price target right now is $16. The stock trades at about $12. The lowest analyst projection I see for the next 12 months is $12.80. So, across the board, we’re looking at a very cheap-looking stock. Again, that’s what we do for the monthly portfolio: very cheap stocks where we’re expecting jumps in price.

The next two are names we’ve had on here for a while: Velocity Financial (VEL) and Assured Guaranty Ltd. (AGO). These two companies also look incredibly cheap.

We’ve seen pretty solid share buybacks at a lot of these companies. We just think there is no way these companies are going to remain this undervalued without someone taking notice, coming in, buying additional shares, and beginning to drive the price up.

One company we didn’t have before that we will be adding is Woori Financial Group (WF). That’s an ADR trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and you should be able to buy it through basically any brokerage.

This one does have some pretty incredible trend to it and has been doing very well. But when you go through and do a DCF — a discounted cash flow analysis — whether you do it on an earnings basis or a free-cash-flow basis, this stock has a lot of room to run.

If you look at earnings power, it’s not as good, but a DCF is putting this stock at nearly 2x the current price. The average analyst price target sits at around $92. That’s not really worth putting much weight on because I think there may be only one or two analysts covering the stock, so it’s not super important. But it still looks very, very undervalued.

The last one for this section, although we have a few more we’re adding as well, is Franklin BSP Realty Trust (FBRT). This has been on a constant decline since 2022. Again, we’re not looking at trend in this case because we’re not looking to buy these holdings for a long period of time. These are cheap stocks with high upside potential based on what they’re currently valued at.

On a DCF basis, if you look at free cash flow, this is a company that can screen anywhere from 4x to 5x the current price, especially on free-cash-flow-based DCFs. Earnings-based, I would say it’s about on par. But across the board, when you look at projected free cash flow and things like tangible book value, it looks very, very cheap.

A lot of this seems to be driven by the huge jump in revenue the company had in 2023. Revenue in 2022 was about $310 million. Revenue in 2023 was about $567 million, and it has stayed in roughly that range over the past couple of years. So we’ve seen crazy performance there, and it doesn’t seem to be valued at the level that its earnings growth reached.

There are some big players that have also bought into the company. Mario Gabelli is a great guru, or super investor, who recently bought into the stock, so we’ve been paying attention to that as well.

In general, those are the ones we’re interested in. We like them. There is nothing specifically, other than the trend issues I mentioned, turning us away from these stocks.

Trend-Focused Monthly Picks

One of the things we do is run the same system, but we specifically look for stocks that are, quote-unquote, “fitting the trend” that we like. If you look at the stocks fitting that trend, we’ve got a couple in here that look really solid and have already shown nearly 2% returns since October 1.

One of those is Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI). The stock is already up 4.22% since we bought it on October 1.

If you look at the trend, we’ve kind of got that whole trend-is-friend thing going on with this company. Over the course of the year, it’s been pretty stagnant. It had one point where it jumped up a ton and then immediately dropped back down over the next couple of days.

In general, though, it has kind of wavered and has now started to take off. It’s up 41% year to date and 112% from the low, and it seems like the trend is picking up.

When you look at why it’s so undervalued, just look at the revenue growth. It’s exponential. In 2023, call it $7 billion. In 2026, roughly $39 billion. So there has been massive, explosive growth there.

It looks extremely undervalued based on a couple of different measures. Specifically, if you look at the Peter Lynch value, it puts the stock at roughly 2x where it is right now — about $82 compared with a current price around $43. That’s one of the reasons we like SMCI.

One of the companies we’ve had on here for a while is Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA). That stock also looks very undervalued when you look at projected free cash flow and things like that.

The stock currently trades at about $249. I would say our valuation puts it at nearly 2x that, around $473. Again, it’s one of those companies that seems to have the potential to be a massive grower if and when it catches on. That’s great for our monthly picks because that’s what we’re looking for: undervalued companies with the potential to grow massively.

Another company we’re looking at is XP Inc. (XP). Same kind of story here. It’s a tech-driven financial services platform in Brazil. Trend is friend in 2026. It started off a little rough, but it has been expanding and growing quite quickly over the past couple of months.

Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is another one. It had a rough beginning to 2026 and is starting to pick up here.

Our last one is West Coast Community Bancorp (WCCB), and this has been on a tear since 2024 — just growing, growing, growing. It was stagnant in 2025, but we’re seeing that growth start to hit again right now. We’re expecting that to continue, which is why it’s hitting our monthly picks portfolio.

We’ve got a couple of other names I’m not going to dig too deeply into, but go check those out. I’ll include an image in the newsletter with all of the current holdings so you can go through them, find them, and purchase them if you’d like. We invest in these every single month.

We originally weren’t going to share these picks with everybody because I try to focus on a more long-term approach, but they’re there if anybody would like to pay attention and follow them.

Flagship Fund and Closing

Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

* The Perplexity AI Finance Portfolio

* Portfolio managed entirely by Perplexity Finance, offered by The Simple Side on Autopilot.

* The Insideredges.com Portfolio

* Portfolio built by Insider Edges Premium Picks, Monthly Picks, Momentum portfolio, and Ultimate Portfolio.

* 10+ holdings

* Picks come from across all their pro-tier portfolios.

Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

* The Flagship Fund

* Long-term holds (12-month rebalance)

* Focused on quality growing companies

* 15-25 holdings

* The Tech Growth Portfolio

* Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months)

* Focused on disrupting high-growth names

* Includes monthly picks

* 15-20 holdings

* The Second-Hand Effects Portfolio

* Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months)

* Focused on current trends, “picks and shovels.”

* 15-20 holdings

Other Offerings (Only Available Through This Newsletter)

* One-off Researched Stock Bets

* Individual stocks we invest in whenever we find good opportunities.

All right, everybody. Welcome back to another portfolio update from The Simple Side. Sorry, this one is coming at you so late, so deep into the week, even though it’s only Tuesday. Usually, I try to get these out over the weekend, but we’re going to talk about all our portfolios and their performances.

Let’s get into it right now. All right. As I said, these updates, these performance results are coming out somewhat late, so I am going to try to just quickly run through all the portfolios individually, and then we’ll just finish it off like that, just so you have a quick update on what I’m thinking about in all the portfolios that I’m managing. And you can decide whether or not you want to adjust or allocate capital, in between or across any of these portfolios.

Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

Perplexity Finance

We’ll start off, as always, with the alternatively managed portfolios that I have. These are the two portfolios that aren’t specifically The Simple Side related but are, in other ways, shape, or form, portfolios that I’m managing on autopilot. The first one, of course, is the Perplexity Finance portfolio, which is what we’re going to start with here. I think the last time we spoke, year to date, the portfolio was up something like 28%.

I’m looking at my pilot dashboard in Autopilot. I’m seeing year to date aggregate performance is now 33.81%. So very impressive performance there. Very happy with that.

It looks like our total assets under management on this portfolio are now $819,000, which is great. And of course, the S&P 500 over the same period of time only averaged an 8.96% return. So outperforming that by over 20%, which is very impressive in this portfolio. We’re heavily weighted in basically no stocks in this portfolio.

Our allocation percentages across all of our top holdings are less than 10%. We have a couple that are over five, I think about five different stocks that are over 5% in the portfolio. But everything else is under 10%. Our top-performing stock is Micron Technology, ticker MU.

We’re up around 381% on the stock, as of the time of recording, obviously. And our number two performer is Lam Research Corporation, ticker LRCX, and that’s up about 96% at the time of recording. Last week, the portfolio year to date was up 28.78%, so seeing now that we’re up 33.81% is great to see. We’re growing week over week.

And last time we looked at the three-month performance, I think we were up 20.29%, and now we are sitting at up 29.38%. So, impressive performance over the past three months as well.

InsiderEdges.com (Portfolio & Website)

And the next actively managed alternative portfolio that we have is the insideredges.com portfolio. I just made a bunch of adjustments in this portfolio based on some new changes that the Insider Edges team made on their website, some new premium portfolios that they added, and things of that nature. For some reason, on my autopilot dashboard, I can’t get the year-to-date returns pulled up, but I can see that over the past three months, we’re up around 10.21%, slightly underperforming the S&P 500, which is up around 13.5% over the same period of time. And it looks like we’re sort of underperforming on this portfolio over the past month, week, and so overall underperformance from this portfolio.

I’m trying to pull up what the year-to-date returns are. Yeah, I don’t know why I can’t get that pulled up. Not a big deal. In this portfolio, our top position is also Micron Technology, ticker MU.

Allocation here is about 17% in the portfolio. And since I just adjusted all these picks yesterday and this morning, we’re seeing a bit of a sell-off in the market. I’m showing down about 8% on that Micron position. Our second-largest position is Amazon, ticker AMZN.

Allocation here is about 7.72%, and it looks like we are down 3.9% on that position. Of course, again, entered into yesterday. So down on a couple of those positions on a market sell-off. But as always, expecting performance to come as those picks kind of start to play out.

Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

The Flagship Fund

All right, and now we’re going to take a look at the flagship fund, which is our primary investment vehicle. This is where a majority of my money goes, and how I’ve been investing since 2020. So if we take a look here, it looks like year to date, I’m showing on the autopilot dashboard. And again, this is client aggregate performance.

So out of everybody that’s invested in the portfolio, the average return across all of those people is this number. So this might not be exactly indicative of your performance, but overall, this is what the portfolio is averaging. We’re up 13.57% on the year. Of course, that is above the S&P 500, which again is at 8.96%.

So very happy to see that, especially when you go back and look at late March when we were down 14.53%, and the S&P 500 was outperforming us quite well at that period of time, down only 7.49%. So we were extremely down, and this is when software stocks were selling off. We were heavily indexed in software, and we’ve seen just a great resurgence from the portfolio there, now outperforming the S&P 500. So very happy with how that looks.

If I go through and look at our holdings, our top holding, ASML, is 13.65% of the portfolio. We’re up about 50% on that holding. Google is sitting at number two, up about 71% on that portfolio with an allocation of 12.16%. So good performance coming out of our top picks here in this portfolio.

Something that we are heavily indexed in now, no longer software, but we are heavily indexed in a lot of semiconductor stocks here. I still think these are very quality names, but watching the sell-off kind of happening this morning, we’re probably going to see some poor performance coming out of this portfolio. Until that, what you could call a semiconductor sell-off stops, if and when it stops, and I’m sure it will. I’m not very worried about that at all.

We have a lot of other quality names in our portfolio that are kind of underperforming. So I expect if semiconductors do sell off, we’ll see our portfolio come down a little bit. However, those other names, those other quality names, we should probably see a rise out of those, as they are less “growth” focused. And I’m getting an alert right now that Micron is down about 10%, so that’s going to hit us pretty hard in those other two alternatively managed portfolios, insideredges.com and Perplexity Finance.

So if you’re in those portfolios, be prepared for a bit of a drawdown. I’m sure that it’s going to come in ASML as well, and some of the other semiconductor stocks that I have. So just be ready for a drawdown today, but it shouldn’t be anything too distraught. I wouldn’t be too distraught about it, I’m sure.

This sell-off is a lot of news-focused, not a lot of fundamental changes that I’ve seen. So I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

The Tech Growth Portfolio

All right. The next thing that we have for you guys is the tech focus growth portfolio, which, surprisingly, I just have not been abl…

All right, everybody, welcome back to another weekend newsletter from The Simple Side. We’re gonna jump into our portfolio performance, all of our one-off stock bets, and we’ll talk a little bit about why the market dropped so much and if we should be worried. Let’s get into it…

But before we do…

Here is a quick breakdown of all the current offerings that Simple Side subscribers can indulge in. We offer a total of 2 alternatively managed portfolios, 3 managed portfolios, and a group of one-off stock picks. All of my personal investment capital is invested in all of these things I discuss, unless otherwise stated.

Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

* The Perplexity AI Finance Portfolio

* Portfolio managed entirely by Perplexity Finance, offered by The Simple Side on Autopilot.

* The Insideredges.com Portfolio

* Portfolio built by Insider Edges Premium Picks and Monthly Picks

* 13-19 holdings

* 10 from the premium picks portfolio and 3-9 from the monthly picks.

Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

* The Flagship Fund

* Long-term holds (12-month rebalance)

* Focused on quality growing companies

* 15-25 holdings

* The Tech Growth Portfolio

* Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months)

* Focused on disrupting high-growth names

* Includes monthly picks

* 15-20 holdings

* The Second-Hand Effects Portfolio

* Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months)

* Focused on current trends, “picks and shovels.”

* 15-20 holdings

Other Offerings (Only Available Through This Newsletter)

* One-off Researched Stock Bets

* Individual stocks we invest in whenever we find good opportunities.

Let’s quickly talk about our managed portfolios that we talk about and share with subscribers for free in the newsletter. The two portfolios that I’m gonna talk about here are available to copy trade on Autopilot. And like always, there’ll be links in the newsletter all over the place for you to go and find these portfolios on Autopilot to copy trade them. One of these portfolios is managed by Perplexity Finance. The other one is insideredges.com, which is an insider trading, thirteen-F tracking, hedge fund tracking platform that’s available, and you guys can go and look at that and find that and use them and their stock picks if you so choose.

Our quick discussion on the current market and if we should be worried is at the very bottom today…

Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot)

Perplexity Finance

Let’s start with the Perplexity Finance portfolio that we’re managing. Currently, the portfolio has something like eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars of assets under management, and that’s spread across about a hundred different people. Year to date, the portfolio has been doing extremely well, up 28.78% percent, while the S&P five hundred over the same period of time has only averaged 7.96 percent returns.

So pretty impressive returns there. And again, over the past three months, we’re up something like twenty percent, again, outperformance against the S&P five hundred.

Over the past month, we’re up four point four eight percent, again, outperforming the S&P five hundred, which is only up one point nine percent. And then over the past week is where things started to get a little bit ugly. We’re down three percent, 3.06 percent to be exact, and the S&P five hundred over that same period of time is down two point five percent. So a little bit of underperformance, in the short term, but when you zoom out, when you look at the big picture, we’re outperforming by quite a vast margin there. And, we’re very happy to be sitting in that position with this portfolio.

Now, if we want to talk stocks and the allocations that we’re seeing in this portfolio, it’s pretty cut and dry, pretty simple. Micron is the number one pick in the portfolio with a weighting of 7.36%. We’re up almost 280% on that stock. Google is sitting at the number two allocation, which is 7.28%… so, about 0.1% less than our Micron position. That’s up about 15%. And then in the number three position, this has been a relatively new one from Perplexity Finance over the past few weeks. It’s been growing in the position in XLU. That XLU stock is in the utility sector, and so it’s tracking the utility sector there. That’s a 7.21% weighting, and that’s down about 1.4%.

So, I think if you look at the broader market downturn that we just recently saw, the large sell-off that we saw on Friday, especially, the XLU purchase starts to kind of make a little bit of sense. It’s looking for a little bit of stability while a lot of the other things in the market are on rocky ground.

The next couple of stocks we have on the list are Amazon, Microsoft, UnitedHealth, Lam Research, and then we have a Schwab US dividend ETF. So those really make up about your top 10 picks there. Overall, as I said, performance has been very good. It’s well-to-do. New stock picks come out for Perplexity Finance every Monday morning. So if the AI decides with the information that I feed to it that it wants to make some sort of a change, it’ll let me know then. I’ll go in, I’ll make the change, I’ll make the adjustment,

Then the portfolio will continue on. Again, the goal I think for this portfolio is just to have extended slow growth, looking for anywhere upwards of 8% to 10% returns per year. So a slight outperformance of the S&P 500 is what we’re going for. Recently, we’ve seen a large outperformance against the S&P 500. Hopefully, that continues, but only time will tell.

InsiderEdges.com (Portfolio & Website)

The next managed portfolio that we have is the InsiderEdges.com portfolio. This is a newer one that I just started tracking on Autopilot, and that means that we don’t have as many subscribers or as many assets under management under this portfolio yet. But I think over time, and from what I’m gleaning from the InsiderEdges.com website, we should start to see this portfolio pick up and outperform over time, especially in bull markets. So we just started this portfolio, I want to say about three-ish months ago. So over the past three months, we’re up around 11.75%. Autopilot shows the returns a bit lower because it takes the aggregate return, not the actual return you would have experienced over that time period.

Again, the S&P 500 was up over that same period of time, 8.25%. So outperformance there. Over the past month, we have been struggling down 2.55%, while the S&P 500 returns 1.9%. So we’re down a little bit under the S&P 500 over that same period of time. But over the past three months, again, zooming out at the bigger picture, we’re seeing some outperformance from the portfolio there. And then this past week, the portfolio just got smoked really hard, down 5.61%, while the S&P 500, as I said earlier, was down only 2.5%. So underperformance again over the past week should be no surprise, heavily indexed in tech, as many hedge funds and 13F investors are. So, of course, we’re going to see some negative performance, especially when we watch the Nasdaq take such a sharp fall. So the way InsiderEdges.com portfolio works is we take all of their premium portfolio stock picks that are available to subscribers who use the website, and we put them into a portfolio, and we offer that portfolio for people to copy trade. Now, if you look back at the historical, I guess, rankings of the portfolio, we’ve seen the premium picks portfolio perform at about 17% per year, and we’ve seen the monthly picks portfolio perform at about 22% a year.

So if you want to go and check any of that out, again, just go to InsiderEdges.com. But we’ll talk about what their top positions are at the current moment. They currently have 14 positions. I think 4 of those are coming from the monthly picks portfolio. The other 10 are coming from the premium picks portfolio, and they’re allocated as follows. Microsoft is in the largest position by a pretty wide margin outside of the top three holdings. Allocation percentage is 16.17%. Current return since that stock’s been invested in is 4.2%. Amazon is in the number two position. Allocation …

Thanks to hear.com for sponsoring this article!

What a year this has been, and what an insane past few weeks…

The market has been in an oil CRAZE, and it seems that despite the worry of the oil markets, despite the overvaluation of the markets, despite the insane debt levels of the US government, despite it all… the money printer that is the United States stock market has pushed forth to higher and higher levels.

Year-to-date, the stock market has risen nearly 8% — a figure I honestly thought was near impossible. Since 1993, the SPY has averaged an 8.65% CAGR, with relatively few major drawbacks. The following graph represents the market’s CAGR as it changes throughout the years from 1993 to 2026. Make a note that nearly anytime we see a dip in the graph, the market is offering an incredible buying opportunity.

It should come as no surprise that in recent years, CAGR has made massive jumps. Since 2023, the market CAGR has been 17.85%, and assuming positive returns through the end of 2026, we will be looking at the fourth consecutive year of gains.

Since 1993, the market has seen more than 3 years of straight gains for more then 4 months in a row only 3 times. Once from 1995 - 1999 (5 years), another time from 2003 - 2007 (5 years), and now from 2023 - 2026 (4 years). I am sure I don’t need to remind you what happened in the years following those great market runs ending in 2000 and 2008.

One thing I do think is important to mention, however, is the returns that we have been experiencing these past few years relative to the most similar bubble. Before the Dot Com bubble that occurred in 2000, the average returns were 26%, while the current average returns are 18%.

Now, I am not saying that before any kind of market downturn, we need to average 26% returns, but I did just want to show that the market still does have room to run relative to what we have seen historically.

One of the largest differences we have now, relative to the 2000’s crash, is real earnings growth. Companies are truly seeing earnings growth, and we know that earnings growth typically translates into growth in the S&P 500.

We can also look at the two (earnings growth and SPY growth) on the same chart, and get a similar depiction.

Again, here you can see that things track quite similarly along with one another. When there is an increase in earnings, the SPY tends to see an increase in the price of shares.

I wanted to share all of this information for two reasons.

* The market doesn’t go up and to the right for infinity. There has to be a reason for the market’s value to increase.

* We are approaching levels of growth that have historically pointed to following declines.

This week, I just wanted to look at some quick, super generalized trends we are seeing just with the S&P 500 relative to recent events and how substantially different they are from normal. I also wanted to note the fact that even though we are extremely far away from normal, we are also very far away from the insanity that we had in the 2000s.

I know that the mainstream media makes it feel so deeply that the world is falling apart, but the reality is that we are still okay.

Yes, the world is crazy, and the market is volatile, but overall, the market’s momentum is positive, and earnings keep proving the growth in the S&P isn’t nonsensical.

Now I want to get into my portfolios and some potential research bets later this week. For now, I want to get into and share the current stocks we are invested in. We have had relatively solid performance on these picks to date (as is seen on our website https://thesimpleside.news/research for paid subscribers).

I just wanted to share all of the current bets as well that exist outside of the portfolios.

Thanks to VantagePoint for sponsoring this article!

This is going to be one for the paying subscribers. Today, I am going to skip talking about the news, and instead, we are going to take a look at two investments I have made.

We also have new stock picks for our monthly investments, and coming this week, we will be discussing some of the new stock picks from InsiderEdges.com.

There is a ton of value in today’s newsletter. I will try to send out some synopses on all of these investments over the next few weeks. It will help to have some more concentrated looks at each of these investments.

One of the companies is a stock we already own, and I am going to be revisiting the valuation thesis (this is Stock 2). For stock two, I am expecting an initial jump in stock price to occur within the next 60-90 days, assuming no major changes in the thesis. The full stock returns will be realized over multiple quarters and will come after cash flows remain steady.

The payoff timeline for stock 1 is not as exact as the other investment. We know that the deal we are investing in is expected to close in the latter half of 2026. So, I suppose this will be a 90 to 120-day payoff timeline.

Here is a quick synopsis of the investments:

Stock 1Returns: 33%Timeline: 90-120 days

Stock 2Returns: 308%Timeline: >1 year**

*Caveat that this investment should see an initial bump within the next 60-90 days based on my analysis (nothing is guaranteed).

For those of you wondering what you are missing, I want to offer up an example.

When the Strait of Hormuz started topping headlines all across the globe a few months ago, we decided that we needed to buy some portfolio insurance. We were sitting at nearly a 50% cash position, looking for potential investments to help offset losses we thought were coming, thanks to idle oil tankers.

One of those stocks we decided to go long in was CVE (Cenovus Energy). We posted about the company on March 9, and cited two main reasons for the purchase.

* Rising oil prices meant higher revenues and, therefore, higher stock prices.

* A hedge against our current portfolios, which are heavily invested in higher-risk, AI-adjacent equities.

Oil averaged a price of $69 a barrel in 2025, and at that value, CVE generated $38,239M in revenue.

At the end of 2025, CVE was worth about $17.53 a share, and with 1,883M shares outstanding. We calculated the market cap at that time to be about $33,008M. Let’s call this a 1:1 valuation (even though the actual ratio is about .86). So, we can value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues.

Now, let’s assume that all of their revenue was being generated by oil. That means they made $38,239M in revenue, divided by $69 per barrel, equals about 554M barrels of oil.

Those same 554M barrels of oil, valued at $100 per barrel, would bring revenue up to $55,400M. Now, if we value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues, that means the market cap would be $55,400. Divided by the same number of shares outstanding: 1,883M, we end up with a per share value of $29.42.

This is a projected 62% return for CVE in just 1 year. That model also assumes no growth and includes none of the “speculation money” that would flow into the stock over that timeline, either. Regardless, we adjusted this return for the potential for speculative capital, solved for the company already being undervalued, and ended up with a final potential annual return of 80%.

We then figured that if oil was to stay at a value of $100 for just a quarter, we could see returns of 20% in just that time frame, and we made our bet on CVE at a value of 23.54.

Just 21 short days later, we closed out the trade with a 20% profit on March 30 at a value of $27.44.

*Please note that in this analysis, I made a ton of assumptions that are not necessarily true, but I wanted to show the general methodology that led me to make this stock pick.

Without any further ado, let’s talk about our new investments!

Enjoy this article thanks to Constant Contact!

Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here

Insider Trading & Hedge Fund Reporting: Found at InsiderEdges.com

Help Me Help You!

One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you.

If you want to get a quick overview of the current happenings in the oil market, I would go read last week’s newsletter (or listen to it).

I would also strongly recommend that you go listen to anything from Doomberg. He is one of the top energy market analysts and is the person (group) that I turn to when the energy markets are having their moment. Doomberg was one of the first people to get me into my SMR investments. The most recent podcast I have seen from him is this one.

Between those two articles, you should be able to catch up on the world of oil and the current state of the oil economy.

If you have been following my recent oil bets over the past few weeks, then you know that we have made 3 main bets and they have returned 12%, 13%, and 10% just in the past week. You can find all of those picks I made in last week's newsletter, and I will include them in this week’s with some updates on performance.

Let me quickly give my opinions on the upcoming market movements and the current state of the market. My opinions from last week remain. In 18 months, oil will be lower than it is today. If you wanted hard numbers, I would say that oil will be down below $90, and likely below $80 a barrel. With that being said, I think we are absolutely on the verge of an energy crisis; however, I do not think that the US is going to be affected as adversely as people think.

Here is a quick quote on energy consumption in the US:

The United States consumes approximately 20–20.5 million barrels of petroleum products per day as of 2023-2024, representing about 20% of global consumption.- https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6

Here is a quick quote on the energy production in the US:

U.S. crude oil production is at record levels, averaging approximately 13.4 to 13.6 million barrels per day (b/d) as of early 2026. The U.S. is the world's top producer, with total petroleum production (including natural gas liquids) exceeding 21 million b/d.- https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press577.php

So, the key thing to note here is that we are seeing production and consumption in the US that are nearly equal. We do not have to export what we have; we are self-sufficient in the oil markets, and if we need to, we can turn off the export machine and keep our oil internal. This means that we will not see oil restrictions at the pump, but the prices could remain elevated for longer.

One of the trades that I would love to scream about from the rooftops right now is buying natural gas. Oil and natural gas have a long-term correlation, and with natural gas so low right now, the argument could be made that going long natural gas would be beneficial. The one issue I have with that trade is the fact that when we drill for oil, we typically end up with natural gas as well.

Modern techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling can extract both from the same well, and operators are likely to focus on the higher-priced petroleum products in the short term. This actually puts negative pressure on the price of natural gas in the short term, bringing prices even lower. The natural gas trade is coming, but has yet to arrive fully in my eyes. If we see natural gas futures get pushed down below $2 (or even lower), then we could have some extremely large upside opportunities over the long run.

For now, the best trades to make are long oil (like we have done) and neutral on nat gas. The rest of the market will continue to decline until we see the newest American war start to shut down.

Again, we are about 50% invested in our portfolios, and 25% invested in these oil bets on the side, and we can take this additional 25% in cash and push further into these one-off oil bets if we see further upside (helping to offset the portfolio losses further).

Quick Comments

I am still 50% invested in my portfolios. These are the same ones you can copy trade on Autopilot (The Flagship, AI Second-Hand, and Tech Growth) portoflios.

About 25% of my portfolio is uninvested and is returning 3.25-3.75% returns in HYSAs, treasuries, and other “cash equivalent” positions.

The final 25% is currently invested across 3 main oil names and 1 additional crypto bet (with small allocations to others). Please note that these are available to paying subscribers. I will be sure to discuss these directly below for pro members.

This year, the portfolios are struggling (no surprise here, as the whole market is); however, the other 50% is what is keeping our returns stabilized. My current investments are down about 10% YTD for all of the portfolios. In comparison to the -7% we are seeing in the SPY, I am not upset in the slightest about these returns. I still think we own some of the top-quality companies available to investors in the US!

The 25% cash position is up something like 0.8%.

The 25% we own in one-off bets is up about 10% on average.

Portoflios (50%): -10%

Cash (25%): +.8%

One-off (25%): 10%

Overall portoflio (100%): -2.5% YTD

Overall, having a loss of 2.5% while the market struggles and sits at losses over 7%, I can’t be too sad. I think there are a lot of investors who are struggling much worse than I am right now.

As an important note, I think we have some extreme upside in those one-off bets we have made, and we will see the portfolio turn green in the coming weeks as oil prices remain at their higher-than-normal levels. Between all of our oil bets, I can see a +30% upside possible (on average).

**Final note: these are my personal opinions and investments and are in no way, shape, or form am I acting as a financial advisor for you or your portfolios.

If you want to take a 100% position in the oil bets, if you want to take a 50% position or a 1% position, it does not matter to me. You do not, nor should you, copy my exact portfolios or positions.

The “monthly picks” that I made have been faring the storm relatively well. They are down only .34% this month. We will be closing these trades on Tuesday, and we will then be opening April’s trades the following day (April 1st). We currently have 2 monthly stock picks in the works for next month.

With all of that being said, I would love to hear from you all how you would like to see all of these different research articles and stock portfolios presented. I have thought about building a sort of heatmap for all of these, but I don’t know what would be best for you all.

I like the website, but I think we can do better…

As a further note, this is everything we offer to subscribers:

* Portfolios

* Flagship fund

* AI Second Hand Effects

* Tech Growth

* Other

* One-off Research

* Macro Allocations

* Monthly Stock Picks

* Weekly Stock Picks

* Hedge Fund Portfolio

* Coming Soon in partnership with InsiderEdges

Quick Updates (Current Bets)

Enjoy this article thanks to Groundfloor! (if you are looking for a solid place to keep your “cash” this is it — again sponsored but I love what they do).

We have a few questions this week about our investments that I wanted to answer:

Question about stop losses on weekly picks: Manual stop losses, we wait and see if things cross below 1% and then we kind of watch for a few mins. If the stock just immediately plumets then it is a sell right away, if not we hold for about 10 mins and then sell.

Question on our portfolios: You can find all of the stock we invest in here: https://thesimpleside.news/ — we have a portfolios page, a research page, and a weekly picks page as well. All of these have available data for you!

Reach out to me directly at [email protected] if you have further questions or use that button below.

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Current Economic Views

Oil, oil, oil.

Really, that is the main and only thing driving the markets right now. If you are not up to speed on the oil happenings right now, I want to quickly update you. If you are up to speed, but you want a quick synopsis, this would be a great place to start.

The current big issue is the Strait of Hormuz, which has been in a strict lockdown since the issues with Iran started. Currently, the strait has been deemed the “world’s most expensive parking lot” since nearly all ships (on either side) are held up and unable to pass through. The picture below is taken from marinetraffic.com and shows all of the ships stopped on either side of the strait.

The average amount of oil that flows through the strait daily is about 20 million barrels of oil (and other crude products). This represents about 20% of the global consumption and nearly 25% of all seaborne oil (as reported by the BBC). The “war” has been going on for about 22 days now, which means about 440 million barrels of oil have been unable to move over that duration. In general, this seems like a drop in the bucket when you know that the total oil use annually is over 37 billion barrels; however, if you annualize the average daily amount of oil that passes through the strait, you end up with over 7.3 billion barrels cut from the world’s supply (this is about 20% as we noted earlier).

This matters a ton for a few reasons, but the main one is the inelastic demand that the world has for oil — in other words, regardless of the price of oil, the demand remains relatively the same. This means, regardless of whether oil is $2.50 at the pump or $4.50 at the pump, the amount that people drive tends to remain about the same. This means that oil suppliers end up making tons more profits because they sell about the same amount of oil for much higher prices.

The final important note is that when oil goes up, so does basically everything else. That is why when we look at the sector performance of all the S&P 500 industries, we see this over the past week:

Now, the main issue causing oil to remain elevated for an extended period is Iran’s unwillingness to back down at the current moment. This is forcing Trump to remain involved and is almost entirely decreasing the “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) ability.

So, what exactly does this mean? Should we start going long oil? Should we start shorting oil?

You will hear a ton of “self-proclaimed investment gurus” throwing opinions and commentary out there like they have been in the oil business for years… my recommendation? DO NOT LISTEN. I just recently saw a large publication on Substack tell their subscribers to short oil and go long gold… that is potentially the worst advice I have ever heard, and if anyone followed this advice, they are in a world of hurt right now.

I do not have any direct recommendations like that, but I can tell you what we are currently doing. Since we have been sitting on nearly 50% cash positions, we have executed some trades (deploying about 20-30% of our cash) in some undervalued names, a few in the oil/energy space, and a few other undervalued names in other sectors.

I love this positioning.

When oil spikes, there is almost always a risk for a black swan event to occur (something out of the ordinary) that causes a drastic fall in prices, and I do not want to be caught with my pants down if that were to happen. I think the one-off bets we have in the oil space will help secure upside while other names in the portfolio fall. On the other hand, if a black swan event occurs and oil comes crashing down, the 50% positions we hold in our portfolios will negate the potential crashes in our oil bets.

Currently, I think we are going to see the war remain at a standstill, and we will see $80+ oil through the end of the month at least. Iran really doesn’t have a reason to back down — yet — and I am sure they are aware of the previous TACO moves Trump has pulled with countries in the past.

Again, I say, I like where we are. Current portfolio composition is the following:

Portfolios: 50% Individual Bets: 25% (this is between 20-30% right now).Cash/Equivalents: 25%

In this current setup, we have minimal exposure to high upside oil/gas investments and a medium exposure to lower-risk quality businesses in our portfolios. This is always the way we have wanted our barbell-centric portfolio to operate. Low-risk ideas on one side, high-risk bets on the other. It has served us well in the past and is serving us well now.

One more key thing about oil: over the next 18 months, I can almost guarantee you that oil prices will be lower than they are right now. Yes, quote me on it.

One Final Thought (*IMPORTANT*)

The current price of oil is a black swan event. Something that only happens once in a blue moon, and there is always something big that happens after moments like this…

Everyone starts to focus extremely hard on the cause of the black swan event and how to fix it.

So, what does that mean for the current oil craze? When this event ends, everyone in the US is going to start talking about our reliance on external energy, and everyone will ask, “How can we reduce this reliance?” This is going to put alternative energy back into a bull cycle, and the additional tailwind of AI energy demand will bring energy stocks to unprecedented levels.

This will not happen overnight!

We will probably see a 2-3 year bullish investment cycle into alternative energy (specifically related to natural gas and uranium). We will likely also see huge investments into infrastructure (energy-related) in the US, as well. This bodes extremely well for our AI Second Hand Effects portfolio.

All Current One-Off Bets

We currently have about 25% of our available cash balance invested in some one-off investments. Those names are as follows:

Enjoy this article thanks to Cash App!

Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here

Help Me Help You!

One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you.

Just A Few Side Bets…

We recently came across some stocks we thought had outperforming potential and sent them out to subscribers. They also got posted here: TheSimpleSide.news. These trades are now up 1.53% on average.

We also started a new service for paying subscribers, which offers deep value monthly stock picks. These can be found here: TheSimpleSide.news/monthly-picksThese trades are now down 1.11% on average.

What I have for paying subscribers today is a quick look into two additional bets worth looking into. One in the AI-related realm and one in the oil-related realm.

Before we get into all of those one-off bets, I want to quickly highlight what the macro quant tracker has been doing recently. Remember, this is a purely data-driven approach to the economy and the markets.

As a note, we now offer all of the following to paying subscribers:

3 Copyable Portfolios on Autopilot-The Flagship Fund-AI Bets-Tech Growth+The Macro Portfolio+Monthly Stock Picks+Weekly Stock Picks+One-Off Research Reports

That is an absolutely insane amount of value for the subscription price we offer, and I am happy to do it all!

Macro Quant Views

Before we get into anything, I want to show you the current portfolio performance from the Macro Quant Portfolio. If you do not know, this is a portfolio available to subscribers that makes a weekly allocation to either TLT, SPY, or GLD. We started this macro portfolio on Jan 1 of this year. Here is the YTD performance:

What you will notice is that we have captured the GLD rally early in the year with a near 90% allocation to gold for almost all of 2026.

In fact, I will share the image of what our rating of gold has been every day so far this year… as you can see, we have been in either buy or strong buy territory for nearly the entire year, and this has paid off handsomely.

Interestingly, gold has entered into a period of “strong buy” again. Almost every time we have seen this in the past, we have seen GLD go on a run-up after. Of course, past performance isn’t a perfect indicator of future returns, but this seems bullish.

Now, if we switch gears and look at the overall economy, we have reached the highest level of buying indication that I have ever seen since starting this program early this year.

TLT, SPY, and GLD are all sitting in “buy” buckets right now (something available to our paid subscribers) on our website. This is the first time this has happened since about April of 2025, I believe.

In general, what does this mean? Well, it means the market is likely overreacting to the situation in Iran, and the SPY could be entering into strong buy territory soon. On the other hand, we might see inflation remaining sticky and rate cuts less likely to happen. This is great news for gold, as there could be a further rotation from equities if that is the case, and this could turn into more GLD upside.

In general, if you are invested in any of my portfolios, I would just remain calm at this point. I don’t think there is a reason for any sort of freak-out moment. The data seems to be supporting strong market dynamics, and the selloff on oil will not be a market-crashing event.

Something I do want to highlight is that my cash holdings have decreased by around 20% due to the recent bets that I have made. That means we are sitting on 30% cash holdings, and even with that number, I feel extremely safe with the current market volatility.

Research Bets

If you are a free subscriber, you are getting blocked off a bit early today. I apologize, but a lot of these ideas, I think, are extremely high upside ideas, and that is what everyone who subscribes pays me the big bucks for! If you would like to join, you can do so by clicking the button below.

Enjoy this article thanks to Nibbles!

Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here

Help Me Help You!

One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you.

Do I get to say that we called it yet?

Just about two weeks ago, I posted my typical Saturday Sendout newsletter & podcast. I was discussing how the software selloff seemed irrational. We were seeing a software stock selloff on AI replacement fears, and at the same time, we were seeing the mag 7 selloff on fears that AI capex wouldn’t generate substantial returns.

I titled the article: “The AI Paradox | Nobody Wins and Everyone Loses” for this reason.

Can we have both?

Can AI replace software companies while investment in AI loses its value?

The answer is glaringly obvious: No. It must be one way or the other, and it seems that other investors have been coming to the same consensus this week. Stocks like INTU, RELX, and TTAN were all huge losers during the AI scare that has been going on for really the past year. The stocks are down drastically from their highs: -55%, -50%, and -55%, respectively.

From the Tuesday after we posted that article, the stocks are now up 7.88%, 14.25%, and 18.67% while the SPY is up 0.46% and the NASDAQ 100 is up 1.04%.

Now, I am not saying that we called it perfectly and software stocks will continue rising for months on end and we are all going to get rich investing in them, but the more important takeaway is the framework we had to have to “rationalize” the market’s irrationality.

Ben Graham — mentor to Warren Buffett — was one of the first people to really make a point of this. He was reflecting on the fact that sentiment and news quickly adjust market prices. People vote on whether they think the news is bullish or bearish for a stock on a daily basis. In the long run, however, the market always returns to fundamentals (aka the weighing machine).

One of the most important ways investors, businessmen, or entrepreneurs have made their fortunes is through a process called “riding the wave.” I am sure you know what that means, but in case you don’t, let me give you a quick recap.

Picture a surfer. He is waiting in the water, then he turns and starts to paddle. Just as the wave starts to crest, he jumps on his board, and all he has to do is stay upright as the wave brings him along. This is one of the most powerful investing mental models.

There is always some sort of wave out there. Some are bigger than others, some bring you closer to the shore, some of them you don’t see, some can wreck you, and some can make you lots of money. The waves can be small and unseen by most, or they can be huge, and everyone stands witnesses. When Les Schwab started in the tire business, he struggled to compete with others around him. Tire manufacturers would open up stores right next to his, and these were the same tire manufacturers that he had to buy his tires from. How could he compete when the company would sell their tiers cheaper than he could buy them for? Well, Les rode the foreign tire wave.

Toyo tires entered the market with a cheaper alternative and wouldn’t force Les to overpay. Well, Les rode the foreign tire wave, and his company, Les Schwab Tire, would end up selling after his death for over $3 billion. Now, most people probably never saw the foreign tire wave, but it made Les Schwab a very wealthy man.

Les got lucky because he sort of fell into the wave he rode throughout his lifetime. Investors like us are not so lucky. We have to do something that Les never had to, and that something is the hardest thing to do for any and every one: developing the vision to find the wave early.

The Gold Rush & The AI Wave

I won’t bend your ear about this again, but I wrote this article months ago discussing the “second-hand effects” of the AI wave. I compared it to the gold rush that occurred back in the 1800s, where the people getting rich were not the ones panning for gold, but rather the ones selling them their picks and shovels.

Sure, every once in a while, someone would find gold and strike it rich, but the majority of the folks who went out there in search of fortune ended up with nothing more than the picks and shovels they bought when they went down there. In our initial article, we called out three key areas: semiconductor tool manufacturers/suppliers, data centers, and screens (we were a bit off on the screens thing). Some of the names we called out were ASML, AMAT, LRCX, and KLAC — all of which have had incredible runs since then. The one thing I missed back in June, which I posted about in November, was energy.

One of the things I realized when putting together that article in November was that energy would be the hardest part of the AI buildout to start and sustain. The complications were (and still are) endless: the lack of supply, the aging grid, the distaste toward nuclear. These are all mounting tailwinds for the energy sector.

Take it from the man who is driving a majority of the AI race: Nvidia CEO, Huang:

Not only does he say that energy is the limiting factor, but his business is showing it, too. Currently, NVDA's finished goods inventories have grown to historic levels. Part of the reason for this growing level of inventory is CEO Huang’s belief that the demand level in 2026 will require it; however, it shows quite clearly that GPUs are NOT the limiting supply factor and will not demand huge premiums forever (unless demand runs wild again this year).

Regardless, one thing remains true AI is worthless without data to train on, that data cannot be trained on unless those GPUs are available, those GPUs are worthless unless they have the power needed to run them.

Everything comes back to the power supply.

A report from the International Energy Agency shows a great representation of what I have been talking about for the past year or so. We are still anywhere from 4 to 5 years out from energy demand/growth, even getting close to leveling off. The other tailwind we are looking at is the rising energy costs. As much as it sucks to hear for those struggling with energy bills, data centers and rising costs will not stop anytime soon. The only way to bring these costs down is to flip the supply-demand curve from heavy demand to heavy supply. Again, requiring more investment in American energy production.

I think the best investments to be made right now are still in the energy sector. The last thing I will leave you with is the performance of the S&P sectors YTD.

So, the question remains, “What is the right move to make?” and the answer isn’t super obvious; however, there are some simple adjustments you can make to stay ahead of the shifting global economy. The first thing I would recommend would be to shift capital into the AI Second-Hand Effects portfolio and the Flagship Fund if you want to put your capital to work.

The AI-Second Hand effects portfolio, which you can copy trade on Autopilot (use this link), is energy-centric and has been a clear winner over the past few months, and is outperforming the S&P by around 23% since July of 2025.

We have been discussing the potential diversification of this portfolio if we can find other opportunities within the AI second-hand market, but valuations are still extremely high, and we have no reason to be in a rush. Now, I am going to get into our portoflios for paid subscribers, but whether you are a free or a paid subscriber, be on the lookout for 2 energy names coming your way over the next week.

Quick Macro Views

Macro seems relatively stable from a numbers standpoint. With the war (something we cannot account for in numbers), this probably drops into hold or slight sell territory.

The general economy looks fine, again from a number standpoint. Sure, things have been "decreasing” over the past month, but in general no strong reaction from models either way. See the following for macro stances on SPY, GLD, and TLT.

These are available to paying subscribers in real time on my website: https://thesimpleside.news/macro-indicators

Portfolios & Next Week’s Moves

Whether or not you agree with me that energy is going to be the tail that wags the dog, I think you should pay attention to the current market’s price action. Now, I am going to give everyone an early access look at the stocks I will be posting research articles on next week. We have one name that is a very high-risk, high-reward play, and one that is set to have longer-term growth.

The two names we are looking at for next week are both going to be added to our AI second-hand effects portfolio next week. We are going to wait to see what price action looks like from the recent Iran attacks before going into new companies.