Monthly Performance Update — August 2026

Executive Summary

Our blended directional book returned -5.0% in August 2026, while cumulative return for the directional portfolio stood at 1.5% through month-end. The Hold book was the strongest tier at 4.6%, and the Sell book was the weakest at -5.3%, though the Strong Sell tier was based on only 2 positions so we would not read too much into that result.

This is a recurring monthly companion to our Weekly Performance Update series, tracking a model $1-per-pick portfolio for each rating tier instead of individual calls. Full methodology and every call we’ve ever made is at /research-performance/.

Overall Portfolio This Month

If you’d put $1 into every Buy/Strong Buy pick and a separate $1 short into every Sell/Strong Sell pick, on the day we published each one, here’s what the blended book did this month. Hold is excluded — it isn’t a directional position.

• This month: -5.0% on 46 directional position(s)
• Cumulative since our first pick: +1.5%

Cumulative Book Return by Rating

How Each Tier Did This Month

Buy

• This month: +0.4% on 3 position(s) in the book
• Cumulative since first pick: +5.9%

The Buy book returned 0.4% in August, bringing its cumulative return to 5.9%. That was a sharp slowdown from July’s 15.6% gain and followed June’s -8.7% loss, so the three-month path looks choppy rather than consistently strong. With only 3 positions in the book, we should treat this as a small sample and avoid over-interpreting one month either way.

Hold

• This month: +4.6% on 88 position(s) in the book
• Cumulative since first pick: +3.5%

The Hold book returned 4.6% in August and has a cumulative return of 3.5% since inception. This was the third straight positive month after -1.6% in June and 0.7% in July, which suggests a modest improvement rather than a one-off move. Since Hold is not a directional bet, we read this more as a useful reference point than a portfolio driver.

Sell

• This month: -5.3% on 41 position(s) in the book
• Cumulative since first pick: +1.3%

The Sell book returned -5.3% in August, matching July’s -5.3% after a strong 12.9% gain in June, and its cumulative return is now 1.3%. That two-month slump is a real reversal from the first month, but the pattern is still only three months long, so we should be careful about calling it a durable trend. With 46 positions in the tier, this is less likely to be noise than the smaller books, and it is the main drag we need to understand better.

Strong Sell

• This month: -6.1% on 2 position(s) in the book
• Cumulative since first pick: -1.9%

The Strong Sell book returned -6.1% in August, taking cumulative return to -1.9%. That followed a 4.4% gain in July, so the two-month history is too short to support any firm trend call. With just 2 positions, this result is mostly a reminder that very small books can swing sharply from month to month.

Monthly Returns by Rating

How a $1-per-pick model book for each rating tier (and the blended Overall book) performed each calendar month, trailing 6 months:

Lessons This Month

August was a month where the non-directional Hold book held up better than the directional calls, while the Sell side was the clearest weak spot. The broad takeaway is that our short ideas struggled even with a meaningful number of positions, whereas the smaller Buy and Strong Sell books moved around enough that we should be cautious about reading pattern into a single month.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. Each rating tier’s book is a hypothetical $1 staged into every pick on its own publish date — dollar-weighted, not time-weighted, and not a claim about any real trading account.