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The portfolio remained invested in a single fund outside the stock market all of October. The list of holdings stayed the same across all 4 Monday updates, so the portfolio remained unchanged for the entire month and still grew 3.7% in October while the market dropped 0.7%.
I'm happy with that. The way I look at it is through relative performance against the market where in October we grew while the market declined. Secondly in terms of absolute performance, a 3.7% growth in a month isn't as fast as the portfolio can grow, but it's still meaningful.
A Monday where there is nothing to change in the portfolio is something I'm getting used to. What I like about it is the consistency the strategy maintains, how easy it makes it to maintain a disciplined approach by not relying on speculation or gut feeling (rather on the system's backtested rules) and the simplicity of simply not having to deal with many trades and adjustments. The part that's the most difficult is wondering if the system is doing the right thing since I know that a concentrated portfolio in equities can grow much faster than a single fund so I tend to want to be invested fully in stocks again, but I remind myself that sometimes the best way to build wealth is firstly not to lose it.
This is a line I wrote in my journal on Friday 30th, after a losing week.
zoom out, stay consistent, know that growth comes over time and doesn't have to be every day.
The market itself had a few consecutive positive days while the portfolio underperformed it, then there was a switch in the market as we saw some big tech sell-offs. These kinds of market shocks, not that this week or past month were particularly bad, but relatively speaking it could lead to some short term bias and doubt in your own strategy. We often fall for recency bias as humans and tend to forget the longer term trends or what the data actually says.
The end of the month is always a great time to zoom out, so here's the record of the last 10 months since I went live.
January counts from the 12th. The market is VTI, the whole US stock market, as Dub measures it.
As of 30 October, the $30,000 that I invested on 12 January is now worth $63,929 which is up 113.1% while the market is up 9.6% in the same period. The portfolio increased in 7 of the 10 months while the market increased in 3 months.
Of course the chart has some dramatic ups and downs, but what's important is the consistency. Again I like to use the overall market as a comparison because if the strategy can't outperform the market by a wide enough margin then it isn't worth the time, effort and extra costs to follow it. If we take a long term view we know that about 60%-80% of all funds underperform the S&P500 after fees so it's rare to have a strategy that can do it. We are only 10 months in since Jan 2026 so not yet a full year but tracking well since outperforming the index for 9 of the 10 months.
April and May were the strongest rallies we had so far. The portfolio rose 47.5% in April and 48.0% in May, while the market rose 10.0% and 5.0%. The portfolio was well positioned to capture most of the tech names and positions associated with chips and AI. The growth every week was really high and although it was exciting I remember thinking that it isn't the norm for it to happen or guaranteed that it will keep happening. Every week I kept thinking that I should just continue to follow the strategy, let it update and score the stocks as it has been doing and I can follow the plan.
July was a month of larger declines. Some weeks the decline was consistent day after day which is a difficult position to be in since it's my own portfolio and money that's also declining. I didn't enjoy those weeks but I decided to stick with the strategy and let it update itself every week. I knew the system and rules are able to pick up when conditions in the market change and I trust it to continue doing that. No system will ever be perfect to have foresight and exit exactly as the market changes and then enter when things stabilize so you will always have a period of declines. The thing that mattered to me was to stay as consistent as possible.
Investing is mostly time in the market and not timing the market. It's a cliche to say but it's one of the pieces of advice that I feel matters the most. So, every week I repeat the process that I've built, tested and trusted even though I don't know how the market will react that week.
November's list begins where October's ended. The same fund has been in the list for the sixth week in a row. I look at and work on the strategy every week to see if it's still firing correctly and if there are any changes I can make to improve its results consistently. The list is sent every Monday prior to the market open and the results on Saturday. The whole record is on Dub so anyone can track it.