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Quick Update

I am out on vacation this weekend, so today’s newsletter will be quite quick. Two things

* If the volatility this week made you queasy, then you need to reassess your risk tolerance and take some $$$ off the table.

* I am currently around 50% in cash and find this positioning comfortable.

* Go and read this post from this past week; it might help your mindset a bit.

Weekly Roundup

Monday, Oct 13Stocks bounced back after last week’s tariff scare eased. Lower bond yields (the 10-year slipped toward 4.06%) make future profits look more valuable, so growth names—especially big tech—led. Gold stayed near record levels, which usually means investors are still paying for protection even as stocks rise. Oil hovered just under $60; that’s cheap fuel for airlines, shippers, and consumers, but it can also point to slower global growth or ample supply.

Broadcom jumped after teaming with OpenAI to build custom accelerators. Seems like OpenAI wants purpose-built chips, and Broadcom gets a multiyear, high-margin hardware pipeline.

NVIDIA rose on fresh ties with Meta and Oracle.

Retailers that source heavily from China (Best Buy, Burlington) rallied as trade fears cooled.

Banks firmed up into earnings (Goldman, JPMorgan, Citi), which is typical when investors expect solid net-interest income and trading fees.

One blemish: industrial distributor Fastenal slid after missing a soft read-through on factory demand.

Tuesday, Oct 14Momentum faded. The S&P and Nasdaq slipped while the Dow eked out a gain as money rotated into “boring but steady” areas after strong bank prints from JPMorgan and Wells Fargo. That mix, financials up, megacap tech soft, yields down again near 4.02%, often means rate-cut hopes are helping cyclicals, but investors are taking some profit in the AI leaders.

Google’s $10B India data-center/AI hub shows the arms race to build compute and power in lower-cost markets with friendlier permitting. Ford flagged production cuts after a key aluminum supplier’s plant fire; for a truck maker that leans on aluminum, that’s a near-term margin and volume headwind. GM took a $1.6B charge to slow its EV ramp after incentives changed, code for “match supply to demand so we don’t build inventory.” Timber REITs popped on merger talk (PotlatchDeltic/Rayonier), land plus mills equals scale and steadier cash flows. Navitas soared on higher-voltage power chips for NVIDIA-class data centers; more efficient power conversion is a real bottleneck as AI campuses scale.

Wednesday, Oct 15Markets clawed higher as yields hugged ~4.01% and Fed chatter kept cut odds alive. Under the hood, companies kept repositioning for the AI build-out and slimmer cost bases. Amazon prepared another round of corporate layoffs—painful news for staff, but a signal to investors that management is protecting margins while it spends heavily on data centers. Microsoft expanded an enormous GPU commitment with partners across the U.S. and Europe. ASML and Bank of America both beat on earnings quality metrics, supporting the “semis equipment and big banks are fine” narrative. In energy and industrials: a judge blocking the restart of a key California oil pipeline hit Sable Offshore; liquid-cooling and power-efficiency names (Asetek, others) benefited from the same AI-power theme that’s lifting chips.

Thursday, Oct 16Risk appetite cooled again.

Small caps slumped, and regional banks slid after Zions and Western Alliance disclosed fraud-related losses, never a good look for confidence in the sector. When financials wobble, the rest of the market typically trades more cautiously. The 10-year yield dipped under 4% at points (a safety bid into Treasuries), gold stayed elevated (hedge demand), and oil drifted lower (growth concerns plus adequate supply).

TSMC’s big revenue jump said plainly that AI chip demand is still strong. First Solar rallied as analysts leaned into its U.S. manufacturing and backlog, AI data centers don’t run without lots of power, and utility-scale solar is part of that build-out.

Nestlé announced major job cuts to lift efficiency, a classic “shrink to grow” move.

Salesforce raised a long-term revenue bar on data + AI products.

NIO fell on an accounting dispute with a major investor, a headline risk that can weigh on all China EVs.

Tesla headed back to court over Elon Musk’s pay plan, a governance overhang. Beyond Meat bounced on a debt extension (less near-term default risk, even if the core business still needs fixing). MGM sold a property operation to raise cash and streamline, as well as a balance-sheet tidy-up.

Friday, Oct 17Finished green as yields ticked back near 4%. When rates aren’t climbing and there’s no fresh policy shock, dip-buyers tend to show up. Gold eased a bit (less panic), oil stayed in the high-$50s (cheap energy, but also a soft-growth tell).

Infrastructure and geopolitics drove headlines.

Meta lined up a record private-capital financing for a massive Louisiana data center, important because it shows Wall Street is willing to fund the power-hungry AI build with creative structures.

Micron said it would stop supplying server chips to data centers in China because of ongoing restrictions, while still selling to Chinese firms operating outside the mainland, one more example of supply chains re-routing around policy lines.

BYD and Ford announced big recalls; recalls are costly in the short run and can dent brand trust, though they’re usually manageable for balance-sheet-healthy automakers.

Boston Scientific bought a neuromodulation startup to deepen its pain-management line. Rare-earth exposure lifted Ramaco on hopes that the U.S. will onshore more critical minerals supply.

Portfolio Performance

You can copy trade the portoflios by clicking here!

The returns shown are screenshots from Autopilot (the place where you can copy my trades). These represent the average return of all investors who copy my portfolios. That means the returns in the Autopilot app won’t always match 1:1 with your returns, but show The Simple Side shareholder average.

Weekly Picks Performance

I am debating pausing or stopping the weekly picks. We have done incredibly well with them thus far, but I think the time for them to perform so well is relatively over. If you would like me to continue, please fill out the form in the button below and mention that you want them to stay.

We have generated excess returns of 77% on these weekly picks alone.

Weekly Picks