September 2026 Portfolio Review: In a Closed Pool, Averaging Down Means Selling Winners
A month with no trades erased my YTD gain, and showed me that in a fixed pool, averaging down means selling winners to fund losers.
A month with no trades erased my YTD gain, and showed me that in a fixed pool, averaging down means selling winners to fund losers.
On 11 August my portfolio was up by double digits for the year. Three weeks later it was 4.1%. Nothing collapsed — the month just got less friendly, and it’s made me want to own fewer companies.
July looked like a modest 1.49% bounce back from June’s rough month. Underneath it, one part of the portfolio did all the work while everything else quietly got worse — and three stocks reacted to good news in three completely different ways.
June was my worst month of the year. So I stopped tracking 25 stocks and started tracking 4 themes instead. Turns out I’m better at finding good companies than deciding how much of the portfolio each one deserves.
May 2026 portfolio review is up. The headline +0.4% hides a tale of two portfolios — non-China up +28% YTD, China down -15.2%. I break down what’s dragging, why I’m still holding the AV names, and what I’m doing in June ahead of the FOMC on June 17.
My April 2026 portfolio returned +9.6%, now 4.2 percentage points ahead of the S&P 500 YTD. Healthcare led, Industrials lagged, and five positions reported earnings in 24 hours. Here’s what I’m watching going into May.
I was in Beijing when China’s Q1 GDP came in at 5.0%. The number and what I saw on the ground didn’t quite tell the same story. Here’s how my China positions benchmarked against HSCI — and what I’m watching next.
March was rough — portfolio down 3.6%, but still beating the S&P 500’s 5.1% drop. OVID surged 36%, WeRide delivered, and Pony AI got punished on earnings. Here’s my full March breakdown and Q1 strategy reset.
February was rough — my equities portfolio ended down 3.7% while the S&P 500 dropped 0.9%. A war in the Middle East, an AI wave gutting SaaS valuations, and inflation refusing to cooperate. Not exactly the month anyone planned for. But YTD I’m still up 4.0%, and the 2026 strategy is intact. Here’s what happened, what hurt, and what I’m doing about it.
January 2026: +7.7%. February: gave it all back. My portfolio swung from gold crashes to AI panic. Full breakdown of winners, losers, and what I’m doing about my concentrated Asian tech positions.