My August 2026 Portfolio Review: A Good Month, More Selective Now
On 11 August, my portfolio was up by double digits for the year. By the end of August, it was back down to 4.10%.
That was quite a change in less than three weeks. There wasn’t one dramatic event or one stock that suddenly collapsed. The second half of August simply became less favourable, and quite a bit of the earlier gain disappeared again.
That probably says more about the market at the moment than the 5.03% return I eventually recorded for August.
| July | August | Year-to-date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| My Portfolio | +1.49% | +5.03% | +4.10% |
| S&P 500 | ~-0.1% | +2.78% | +12.45% |
| Hang Seng Index | +13.1% | -1.23% | -0.25% |
August was still a good month for the portfolio. But after seeing a double-digit year-to-date return appear and then partly disappear within a few weeks, I don’t think there is much point celebrating one month’s number.
What I found more interesting was where the return actually came from.
China went quiet
July was almost entirely a China story. My China-related holdings had a strong month, helped particularly by Alibaba (HKEX: 9988), while everything outside China was negative overall.
August was almost the opposite. The market value of my China-related holdings slipped about 0.3% during the month, compared with a 1.2% decline in the Hang Seng.
So China did not really hurt the portfolio in August, but it did not contribute much either. Almost all of the month’s gain came from elsewhere.
I only really noticed this after looking at the portfolio in more detail. If I had just looked at the final +5.03%, I might have assumed the same positions that drove July were still doing the work.
They weren’t.
Healthcare did most of the work
This time, healthcare contributed much more.
Doximity (NYSE: DOCS) rose almost 28% in August, but that number needs context. I’m still sitting on a sizeable loss overall, somewhere between 30% and 50% depending on the lot, so I wouldn’t call this a successful investment yet.
The quarter was decent, but I don’t think the company suddenly became 28% better in one month. Part of the move looked more like sentiment improving after the stock had already fallen quite heavily. Earlier in the year, I was considering whether to cut the position.
So the recovery was welcome, but it still has quite a long way to go before I can say the original investment worked out.
Tempus AI (NASDAQ: TEM) was different. It rose more than 40% across my positions, and interestingly, the catalyst wasn’t even a Tempus announcement.
Merck (NYSE: MRK) and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) released positive Phase 3 results for their personalised cancer vaccine, and the market connected that back to Tempus through its acquisition of Personalis (NASDAQ: PSNL). That connection is relevant to why I own Tempus, but I certainly did not expect somebody else’s clinical trial results to move my Tempus position by more than 40%.
August helped the portfolio, but I don’t want to convince myself that every positive month came from good stock picking.
Sometimes things simply move in your favour.
Taking some money off the table
Ovid Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OVID) was one of the positions I trimmed again in August. I sold roughly the same quantity and at roughly the same price as I did in July.
That was deliberate. Ovid has already had a very strong run, and I think it may need some time to consolidate before the next meaningful move.
I could be wrong.
That is also why I did not sell the entire position. My longer-term view has not really changed, but I don’t necessarily need to keep the full position while waiting. Taking some profit gives me capital that I can use elsewhere if I see a better opportunity.
This is becoming more relevant to how I manage the portfolio. I used to think more in terms of sectors or themes, but with Ovid it was really just a stock-specific decision. The share price had moved a lot, the next catalyst was still some distance away, and I was comfortable reducing the position without changing my longer-term view.
There is always a chance I sell too early.
I’m comfortable with that.
Why not just sell everything?
There are plenty of investors and commentators warning about a much larger correction now. Depending on who you listen to, the forecasts range from roughly 10% to much more severe scenarios.
So naturally I have asked myself the same question: why not crystallise more of the portfolio now, hold cash, and buy again after the correction?
It sounds sensible if I know the correction is coming. The problem is that I don’t. I would need to decide when to sell, and then decide when to buy back.
Some of my stocks have also already fallen substantially from what I originally paid. That does not mean they cannot fall another 30% in a broad sell-off. Of course they can. But if a stock is already down heavily and the business itself is still progressing, selling simply because I am worried about the overall market feels less straightforward.
This is why I am more comfortable dealing with the portfolio position by position instead of making one large market call. Ovid is one example where I was happy to take some profit. For some of the positions that have already fallen badly, I am spending more time looking at whether the company itself is getting better rather than trying to guess where the market bottom will be.
But I don’t think every dip should be bought either
The other thing I keep seeing now is people saying to “buy the dip” whenever the market falls.
I understand the logic. If I liked a company at $100 and nothing has changed in the business, surely I should like it even more at $70. I used to think about it that way quite often.
I’m less comfortable doing that automatically now.
The US 10-year Treasury yield has recently moved above 5%. At that level, the return I should expect from a risky growth company has to be much higher than when government bonds were yielding 2% or 3%.
That changes what “cheap” means.
A stock being 30% below where I bought it does not necessarily mean it has become cheap. If the original valuation was too high, or if most of the company’s value depends on profits several years away, part of the fall may simply be the market adjusting to a higher cost of capital.
This is quite relevant to my own portfolio because some of my holdings are already down significantly from my invested cost. I don’t want to keep averaging down simply because the share price is below what I paid.
I’m increasingly trying to own fewer companies instead. If I am going to put more money into something, I want it to be one of the companies I have the strongest conviction in rather than spreading another round of capital across everything that has fallen.
September is making me rethink a few things
When I wrote my 2026 investment strategy in January, I expected interest rates to eventually become more supportive. That assumption looks less certain now.
The Fed has since made its move. On 16 September, it raised rates by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75% to 4.00%, the first increase in more than three years. The hike itself was widely expected, but what caught my attention was that most Fed officials still expect at least one more increase before the end of the year.
So the question I had earlier in September — whether this was just one adjustment or the start of something longer — has not really gone away.
The first market reaction was also interesting. Short-term Treasury yields moved higher, which makes sense if investors expect more Fed tightening, but longer-term yields were more stable. The dollar strengthened and equities did not collapse.
That makes me less worried about the hike itself than I am about what happens if inflation remains sticky and rates have to stay high for much longer than I expected at the start of the year.
For my portfolio, that matters because quite a few of my holdings are still not profitable.
I noticed this when I looked at some of my healthcare names more closely. UltraGreen.ai (SGX: ULG), Ovid and XtalPi (HKEX: 2228) all sit somewhere in the same broad healthcare bucket, but putting them together now feels less useful than I thought.
UltraGreen is already profitable and generating cash, so the main question there is whether new competition eventually affects pricing. Ovid is almost the opposite. It has sufficient cash for now, but ultimately the drugs still have to work. XtalPi sits somewhere in between — commercial revenue is growing and it has a large cash position, but the business is still loss-making and part of the valuation depends on what its AI and automated laboratories eventually become.
Seeing those three side by side made me realise that saying I want more “healthcare” exposure does not really tell me what kind of risk I am taking.
The same issue comes up with XPeng (NYSE: XPEV). It is still classified as an automaker, but that description feels increasingly incomplete to me because the company is also moving into autonomous driving, robotaxis and Physical AI. At the same time, it already has an operating automobile business and a large cash position, which makes it very different from an earlier-stage robotaxi company.
So I am finding it harder to think simply in terms of growth versus value, or one sector versus another. For some of these companies, the more important question is whether the business can improve fast enough before the market loses patience.
The dot-com comparison I’m thinking about
The amount of money going into AI infrastructure has also made me think again about the dot-com period.
The internet itself was not wrong. It worked, and eventually became much larger than most people probably expected at the time. But many of the companies that were supposed to benefit from it still disappeared.
That is the part I keep coming back to.
Today there is an enormous amount of money going into AI chips, data centres, networking, memory and power infrastructure. Maybe all of it will eventually be needed. I don’t know.
But I do wonder whether some of the capacity is being built faster than demand can absorb simply because nobody wants to be the company that underinvested in AI.
That wouldn’t mean AI failed. It would mean some companies spent too much, too early, or investors paid too much for the suppliers benefiting from the build-out.
This is where I am more cautious about the AI trade now. Not whether the technology works, but whether every company benefiting from the current capex cycle will still look as attractive when spending growth eventually slows.
Then there is the bond market
The bond market is probably the macro issue I am watching most closely now.
US government debt has crossed US$40 trillion and the 10-year Treasury yield has recently moved above 5%.
There are plenty of claims online that foreign governments are dumping US Treasuries, that nobody wants US debt anymore and that some sort of debt crisis is coming.
I don’t dismiss it completely. The US is running very large deficits and needs to continue issuing more debt. Higher Japanese bond yields could also mean more Japanese investors keep their money at home rather than buying US Treasuries.
At the same time, the reaction after the Fed hike did not look like a Treasury market losing control. Short-term yields moved higher because investors expect tighter policy, while longer-term yields were relatively stable.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also argued that part of the rise in long-term yields reflects a strong economy and heavy capital spending, particularly from the large technology companies, rather than simply investors losing confidence in inflation control or US debt.
I am not sure I would take that explanation completely at face value, given how large the fiscal deficits are. But it is worth keeping in mind that a 5% Treasury yield can come from several things at the same time — inflation, government borrowing, stronger growth and very heavy private-sector demand for capital.
For my portfolio, the immediate issue is simpler. If a US government bond gives me around 5%, then a growth company that is still losing money needs to offer me a much better potential return to justify the additional risk.
And if the Fed raises again later this year, that hurdle probably stays high for longer.
The ripple effects go beyond equities too. Higher US short-term rates have already strengthened the dollar, which can tighten financial conditions outside the US. Borrowing becomes more expensive, refinancing becomes more difficult for weaker companies, and investors have less reason to reach for risk when safer assets are offering reasonable returns.
That doesn’t mean something has to break, but it does make me less interested in owning marginal companies just because the theme is attractive.
What I’m taking into the rest of the year
I don’t think the biggest change is that I have become bearish. I have become more selective, and I am increasingly trying to reduce the number of companies I own.
Earlier this year, I was thinking much more in terms of themes: China, healthcare, autonomous driving and Physical AI. I still like all of them, but I don’t think that means I need to own so many companies within each theme.
Some of my stocks are already down substantially from what I paid. That alone is not a reason to buy more. If anything, I now need to decide whether some of those positions still deserve to be in the portfolio.
If a company is still loss-making, its cash position matters more to me now. If most of the valuation depends on something happening several years from now, I am less comfortable paying the same price for that future when Treasury yields are around 5%.
So rather than averaging down across everything, I am increasingly trying to concentrate the portfolio into fewer companies where I have stronger conviction. Some positions may deserve more capital. Some may be perfectly good companies but not good enough for me to keep owning when I already have another company in the portfolio that I prefer.
That does not mean I want to sell every unprofitable company. Ovid, XtalPi, XPeng and some of my other growth holdings all have very different reasons for being in the portfolio.
But I probably don’t need to own every interesting company either.
Energy is another example. Oil has strengthened again above US$100 even though I no longer have any Energy exposure. I closed my last position back in August at roughly breakeven.
I personally think much of the current oil move is related to temporary supply disruption, so for now I am comfortable watching rather than buying back just because the sector has started performing well again.
July was China. August was mainly healthcare and a few stock-specific moves. September has already become more about rates, inflation and bonds.
But the more useful question for me now is probably not whether the next market move is up or down. It is whether I can use this period to simplify the portfolio and end up with fewer companies that I actually want to own.
Disclaimer: This is a review of my personal portfolio and performance for learning purposes. It is not investment advice.