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This week, the returns in our portfolios were brought to you by "The Federal Reserve” and their rate cuts! We are going to jump into the AI-Second hand effects portfolio here in just a minute to discuss some of the factors that drove this week’s performance.

If it just so happens that you were out on a beach this past week, don’t worry, I am going to catch you up with everything that happened in the markets this past week!

The Big Picture

The Fed finally trimmed 25 bps and the market did the happy shuffle: S&P 500 and Nasdaq printed fresh highs mid-week, small caps woke up, and the 2s/10s hovered near ~3.5%/4.1%—easy enough on cash-flow math without feeling bubbly. Oil camped in the low-$60s, gold stayed rich, VIX stayed sleepy. Translation: cheaper money + still-solid growth = “risk on,” with anything tied to AI buildouts, software, and financing (M&A, buybacks) getting an extra tailwind.

The Moves That Mattered

* Musk writes a billion-dollar love letter to Tesla. Elon bought ~2.57M TSLA shares ($371–$397), which isn’t a tweet—it’s a wire transfer. Insider buy that size resets sentiment and says management believes margins/volume or new products can outrun the current skepticism.

* Nvidia builds the AI plumbing while dodging geopolitics. A China pause on certain NVDA chips nicked the tape, but Nvidia countered by spending >$900M to hire Enfabrica’s CEO and license its networking tech (think: knitting 100,000+ GPUs into one logical machine). Add a planned $500M into UK self-driving startup Wayve and the story is clear: sell systems, not just chips.

* Alphabet plants a bigger flag in Britain. Google committed £5B to UK AI (new Waltham Cross data center + jobs). More local compute = lower latency, easier compliance, and another on-ramp for Cloud/DeepMind demand.

* Oracle keeps finding new on-ramps to cloud revenue. Reports it’s anchoring a consortium to keep TikTok running in the U.S. If that sticks, expect sticky, high-utilization workloads on Oracle iron—great for backlog visibility and margins.

* Healthcare power plays. Roche is buying 89bio (up to $3.5B) to bulk up cardio-metabolic; Novo Nordisk rallied on data showing Ozempic beat Trulicity on heart outcomes and an oral sema readout with ~16.6% weight loss. That’s pipeline-by-checkbook from Roche and category expansion from Novo.

* Cash speaks elsewhere, too. Microsoft lifted its dividend +9.6% (AI spend and shareholder returns), Netskope raised ~$908M in a punchy cybersecurity IPO, and FedEx mapped FY26 EPS $17.20–$19 on $1B in savings—leaner networks, richer profits.

Portfolio Highlight

Okay, now let’s talk about the AI Second-Hands Effects Portfolio. I won’t go through the whole thing here (paying subscribers can access it below), but I want to highlight a few of the stocks.

The two stocks I want to talk about are SMR and LEU — both of which were parts of the initial contrarian trades I made on energy and “AI Second-Hand Effects” back in November of 2024. You can find the original article here: article link.

Since I wrote about LEU and SMR, the stocks have returned 320% and 103% respectively. The reason we are talking about them today is because they both hit the list of “top gainers” on Friday with SMR landing a number 5 with a healthy 22.69% return and LEU ending at spot 11 with 12.12% returns.

Now, the reason I want to highlight this is because I don’t make very many changes to my portfolios/investments. A lot of the time I am buying and DCAing into the same group of stocks for months or years. I make very few adjustments to the portfolios, and that makes my investment style the worst for writing a newsletter.

It means I don’t send out a lot of emails, and I don’t send out emails saying “this micro-cap is the next 100x for your portfolio.” Now, that would sure help me sell subscriptions, but it wouldn’t help you or I make any money in the stock market.

My personal money goes directly into the portfolios I share here. The gains you see are reflected in my brokerage account, and my goal is to make us money in the stock market.

The best way to do that is for me to find once-in-a-lifetime asymmetric upside bets, tell you about them, and then invest.

Sure, you won’t get 3 emails a week telling you about the next hot stock (boy that would sell better), but you will get outsized returns in the long run, and that is what I am here for.

Insider Trade Updates

Now, something that I will happily tell you more about are insider trades. I have been tracking insider trades in detail for months personally and I finally decided to keep track of them in our paid subscriber sheet as well.

Insiders don’t always get it right… but they do get the best seats in the house. Here are this week’s trades that made us raise an eyebrow. As a side note, I try to stay away from insiders buying up their penny stock company. While these can still be great signals, the risk-to-reward ratio isn’t one I find favorable.

We keep track of all of these trades on our Google sheet, and then insider returns are quite astounding… (I have been removing quite a few of the penny stocks/ super risky investments to make the returns more normalized.

Buy the Dip Tracker

Insiders buying after meaningful drawdowns — percent and window included.

* TTGT — TechTargetDirector bought 20,000 @ $5.97 after a 75.19% one-year slide. Deep cut in ad/MarTech; use the print as your line in the sand.

* NEXT — NextDecadeCEO bought 281,500 @ $7.14 after a 33.20% one-week drop;Director later bought 500,000 @ $7.31 after a 29.84% one-week drop;Other insider added 357,021 @ $6.98 after a 33.57% one-month pullback.Cluster + capitulation bounce setup; let price hold above the $7 area before leaning in.

* RAPP — Rapport TherapeuticsDirector bought 41,666 @ $24.65 and 20,400 @ $24.48 after a 21.42% one-week hit. When the doctor orders two doses, you read the label.

* ZVRA — Zevra TherapeuticsDirector bought 3,175 @ $7.79 after a 23.01% one-month drop. Small ticket, but it’s the third insider buy in 30 days — a nibble can still telegraph conviction.

Whales & Standout Size ($1M+)

Large prints that can set floors (or at least draw a line for the chartists).

* TSLA — Tesla: CEO bought 2,568,732 @ $389.28 ($999.96M). That’s not a toe-dip; that’s a cannonball.

* BRCB — Black Rock Coffee Bar: 10% Owner bought 3,118,938 @ $20.00 ($62.38M) in a public offering.

* LBRX — LB Pharmaceuticals: 10% Owner 2,666,666 @ $15.00 ($40.0M); Director 1,000,000 @ $15.00 ($15.0M); 10% Owner 333,333 @ $15.00 ($5.0M). Triple-shot accumulation.

* HYMC — Hycroft Mining: 10% Owner bought 14,017,056 @ $4.28 ($40.0M). A gold-adjacent splash.

* CGON — CG Oncology: Director bought 1,515,151 @ $33.00 ($50.0M).

* AMR — Alpha Metallurgical: Director bought 108,000 @ $148.55 ($16.04M).

* RYAN — Ryan Specialty: Exec Chair bought 276,634 @ $51.84 ($14.34M).

* ASA — ASA Gold & Precious Metals: 10% Owner bought 205,492 @ $40.67 ($8.36M) — part of a steady weekly program.

* OPEN — Opendoor: Director bought 451,127 @ $6.65 ($3.0M).

Officer Skin-in-the-Game

Executives opening their wallets (always a stronger signal than outside directors).

* ABAT — American Battery Technology: COO bought 1,240,709 @ $1.07 ($1.33M). Adds to recent C-suite activity.

* ALXO — ALX Oncology: CEO bought 92,233 @ $1.08. Dollar-menu oncology; watch for follow-through.

* MSTR — “Strategy Inc.” (MSTR): EVP & General Counsel bought 12,500 @ $96.92 ($1.21M). Lawyers don’t usually YOLO.

* MBIN — Merchants Bancorp: CFO bought 3,000 @ $24.87.

* NMFC — New Mountain Finance: EVP/CAO/Director bought 49,750 @ $10.03 ($498.8K) via DRIP; Director later added 106,691 @ $9.78 ($1.04M).

Cluster & Repeat Buying

Patterns that upgrade the signal quality.

* NEXT: Three insider buys in 3 days around $7 after a sharp selloff — classic floor-finding behavior.

* ASA: Ongoing weekly accumulation — the glacial kind of buying that moves mountains over time.

* BWFG — Bankwell Financial: 7th and 8th insider purchases in 30 days (directors at $44.78 and $45.91).

* LBRX: Multiple insiders stacking size at $15.00.

* ABAT: Another C-suite buy adds to the recent cluster.

Interesting Trade Ideas & Berkshire Buys

The past few IPO’s that I called out at interesting trades were Black Rock Coffee Bar and Netskope. Currently, Netskope and Black Rock Coffee are up over 30% from their IPO prices.

Now, I am sure that the valuations are high post IPO; however, I like both companies as long-term bets. As for the Netskope thesis, I have been bullish on cybersecurity for a long time, and having a new player in the investing realm is great. As many of you know, I own NET (Cloudflare) in my Flagship and Tech-Focused growth portfolios and the performance has already surpassed 18% since my initial purchase. I don’t currently feel comfortable making a full investment thesis for the company. I want to learn a bit more about the company, their moat, and take some time to consider the future prospects of the business before making any final statements.

As for Black Rock Coffee, I think a new major competitor in the world of “big time” coffee chains is needed and welcomed by a majority of the consumers. Starbucks has been struggling to find its “company identity” along with multiple staffing issues. I do know that the current price-to-sales ratio is 2.67 while Starbucks sits at 2.64 and Luckin’ is 2.1. As far as I know, the company currently has over $200M in debt and isn’t profitable, so it might be some time before I can build a true investment thesis here as well.

While I want more information on both companies, I do think they both pose good potential investments.

As always, I am on the lookout for my next “Berkshire Buy” stock. These companies fit Buffett’s criteria for investing, and are analyzed from that exact viewpoint. Not all of these companies make it into my personal portfolios. Currently, I own OXY and NSSC in my Flagship Fund.

Here are the Berkshire Buy stocks and their returns:

Portfolio Performance

Tracking portfolio performance is going to look somewhat different for everyone. Not everyone will buy at the same time, not everyone will DCAs the same amount, etc. So, performance will vary moderately between investors.

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.

Oh, and I think you might REALLY like these averages.

Free subscribers get direct access to all of these portfolios & real-time updates by joining paid here.

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