The Portfolio Armor Substack

War and Memory

Portfolio Armor — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:47:29 GMT

War And Memory

The week handed us both halves of that title. From the Persian Gulf: fresh attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, revoked Iranian oil-sales waivers, and crude back above $75. From memory: a record Samsung quarter that got sold anyway, another round of contract-price hikes, and—by Friday—the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company, as SK Hynix‘s $26.5 billion ADR offering priced at $149 and opened at $170.

In between, the tape compressed a full cycle into five sessions: a record Dow close Monday, a global chip rout Tuesday, an oil spike Wednesday, a semiconductor-led rebound Thursday, and a quiet Friday grind higher that left the S&P 500 above where the whole episode started—with Meta logging its best week since early 2024 and Nvidia up 4% into the close.

So how do you trade a week like that? Same answer as always: watch the evidence, not the headlines, and stick with your process.

Sold The News

Monday opened with SemiAnalysis floating another bearish AI-hardware note—this one claiming Nvidia’s Kyber architecture could slip by up to a year. Nvidia’s response: “Our roadmap is intact.” The market sided with Nvidia, and the Dow closed at a record above 53,000.

Then Samsung estimated a nearly 19-fold increase in Q2 operating profit—and chip stocks sold off around the world, with the KOSPI falling hard enough to trigger circuit breakers. When a record quarter gets sold that hard, the problem is expectations and positioning, not demand.

That’s a tradeable distinction. Volatility spiked in exactly the names where the fundamentals kept improving, so Tuesday’s alert harvested it: three bullish, defined-risk options trades on AI-hardware names—in AI networking, AI compute, and storage—each entered at a net credit. When the FUD does the pricing, you can get paid to take the other side.

Oil Piled On

Wednesday brought the war half of the title: tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. revoking Iran’s oil-sales waivers sent crude up more than 6%, with Brent back above $75. Energy and defensives caught a bid while the Nasdaq fell 1.2%. The market had spent three weeks pricing the ceasefire as a peace; this week it repriced it as a ceasefire.

Chaotic tapes reward extra discipline, so Wednesday’s alert added a new screen to our process: bullish trade candidates now also have to be trading above their 50-day exponential moving average. A stock can look “not overbought” simply because it has fallen hard and paused; the 50-day EMA check keeps us from catching those knives. Wednesday’s two trades sat on opposite ends of our barbell: a high-convexity micro-cap in RF components and Open RAN, and an AI-infrastructure name.

The Demand Data Went One Way

While the tape whipsawed, the evidence kept stacking up on the same side. Penguin Solutions reported record revenue, up 48%, raised guidance, and tied both directly to AI-driven demand for memory and infrastructure; the stock jumped more than 25%. TrendForce reported memory makers have notified customers of another round of Q3 contract-price hikes. And SK Hynix’s U.S. ADR offering was reportedly more than seven times oversubscribed. We covered all three in More Evidence The AI Boom Has Legs.

By Thursday, semis were leading the market again, with Micron up 4.5% and oil falling back. Thursday's alert took three swings at the AI stack, spanning market caps from micro to large: enterprise AI and data-center hardware, RF components, and advanced semiconductor packaging and test. When the morning orders didn't fill into the rally, we adjusted rather than chased—same strikes, updated pricing—and the enterprise-AI trade filled at a net credit later in the day.

Hands Up

Thursday afternoon, the CEO of humanoid robotics company 1X posted a demo of his robot’s new tendon-driven hands—25 degrees of freedom, “nearing or surpassing human-level dexterity”—and it ran up millions of views overnight. His framing was the interesting part: for seventy years, robotics worked around the hand problem. The humanoid bet is the reverse—it lives or dies at the fingertips. And dexterous hands are an actuator-density story: every finger joint needs a tiny motor, a drive, a sensor, and precision control.

Friday morning, that theme came to us through our process: a precision-motion company in exactly that space hit our technical buy zone, reclaiming a key moving average in the premarket. It led Friday's alert, alongside two more names from the chip whipsaw—a foundry and a packaging-and-test house.

Then the closing bell on the week’s memory thesis: SK Hynix’s ADRs opened 14% above their offering price and held the gain. Wars remind markets that physical supply matters. Memory is where the AI buildout’s economics keep showing up first.

Exits: Thirteen For Thirteen

We had thirteen full or partial trade exits this week—all winners (our losing options exits tend to collect on OpEx days, because winners tend to trigger our pre-set exit orders before expiration; July OpEx is next Friday).

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

Shares of Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF). Bought for $2.24 on 4/15/2026; sold half for $6.75 on 5/14/2026; sold one-third of the remaining shares for $7.61 on 5/28/2026; sold the remaining shares for $4.20 on 7/8/2026. Profit: 170%. Signal: Market Watchers.

Options

Put spread on Cemex (CX 0.40%↑). Entered at a net credit of $0.47 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 2/24/2026; exited at a net debit of $0.12 on 7/10/2026. Profit: 74% on premium collected (23% on max risk). Signal: PA Top Names.
Put spread on BlackBerry (BB -3.79%↓). Entered at a net credit of $0.61 as part of a 3-leg combo on 5/20/2026; exited at a net debit of $0.12 on 7/6/2026. Profit: 80% on premium collected (55% on max risk). Signal: Market Watchers.
Call calendar on uniQure (QURE -4.16%↓). Entered at a net debit of $5.57 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 6/5/2026; exited at a net credit of $10.00 on 7/8/2026. Profit: 80%. Signal: Multibaggers.
Put spread on Ovintiv (OVV 0.25%↑). Entered at a net credit of $1.14 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 4/16/2026; exited at a net debit of $0.20 on 7/7/2026. Profit: 82% on premium collected (24% on max risk). Signal: Chartmill.
Put spread on Calumet (CLMT 1.36%↑). Entered at a net credit of $1.08 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 5/1/2026; exited at a net debit of $0.20 on 7/10/2026. Profit: 81% on premium collected (22% on max risk). Signal: PA Top Names.
Short call on Fluence Energy (FLNC -3.68%↓). Sold-to-open for $2.45 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 6/12/2026; bought-to-close for $0.20 on 7/8/2026. Profit: 92% on premium collected. Signal: Market Watchers.
Put spread on Bioventus (BVS -4.89%↓). Entered at a net credit of $1.71 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 3/18/2026; exited at a net debit of $0.20 on 7/6/2026. Profit: 88% on premium collected (191% on max risk). Signal: Chartmill.
Short call on AstraZeneca (AZN -2.22%↓). Sold-to-open the September 18th, 2026 $230 call for $5.14 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo on 4/16/2026; bought-to-close that call for $0.20 on 7/10/2026. Profit: 96% on premium collected. Signal: PA Top Names.
4-leg hybrid combo on Twist Bioscience (TWST -3.33%↓). Entered at a net debit of $2.25 on 2/27/2026; exited the July 17, 2026 $45/$40 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 6/4/2026; exited the October 16, 2026 $57.50 / short July 17, 2026 $65 call calendar at a net credit of $10.00 on 7/6/2026. Profit: 336% on premium outlay (104% on max risk). Signal: Multibaggers.
4-leg hybrid combo on GlobalFoundries (GFS 1.40%↑). Entered at a net debit of $2.40 on 3/3/2026; exited the July 17, 2026 $45/$40 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 5/5/2026; exited the call calendar at a net credit of $13.50 on 7/9/2026. Profit: 454% on net debit (147% on max risk). Signal: Multibaggers.
4-leg hybrid combo on Moderna (MRNA -10.72%↓). Entered at a net debit of $1.15 on 4/7/2026; exited the July 17, 2026 $42/$37 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 6/17/2026; exited the call calendar at a net credit of $7.00 on 7/10/2026. Profit: 491% on net debit (92% on max risk). Signal: PA Top Names.
3-leg combo on Opera (OPRA -1.84%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.75 on 12/1/2025; exited the April 17, 2026 $12.50/$10 put spread at a net credit of $0.15 on 2/27/2026; sold half of the July 17, 2026 $15 calls for $4.50 on 5/4/2026; sold the remaining half for $5.40 on 7/6/2026. Profit: 580% on premium outlay (134% on max risk). Signal: Chartmill

The one worth walking through is Moderna, because it shows the arithmetic of our hybrid structures cleanly. We entered the 4-leg combo in April for a $1.15 net debit. In June, we exited the put spread for $0.20. This week, with the stock through both call strikes, we sold the call calendar—both call legs together—for a $7.00 net credit. Total profit: 491% on the net debit, or 92% on max risk. Three other exits this week came from the same maneuver, on uniQure, Twist Bioscience, and GlobalFoundries—the last two at 336% and 454% on their entry costs.

That’s the pattern we’re trying to repeat: let the short legs finance the position, harvest them when they decay, and leave the long side room to work. It’s also why our weekly Top Names remain the first place we look for candidates: the January 8th cohort just finished its six months up 45.12%, versus 8.06% for SPY.

Process Over Prediction

War headlines. A record quarter sold hard. A record listing bought hard. A market still deciding who captures the AI buildout’s economics.

We don’t need to predict which headline hits next. We need a process that can handle them: stay bullish where the thesis is intact, tighten the screens when the tape demands it, use option structures to lower cost and define risk, harvest premium when it decays, and give the winners room to run.

Exits, 7/10/2026

Portfolio Armor — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 03:56:44 GMT

This Week’s Trade Exits

As soon as I exit a trade, I note that in the comments of the post where I first mentioned the trade; at the end of the week, I try to track them all in one post. Starting in July, 2024, I have also been tracking them in a spreadsheet. These are the trades I exited this week.

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

Shares of Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF). Bought for $2.24 on 4/15/2026; sold half for $6.75 on 5/14/2026; sold one-third of the remaining shares for $7.61 on 5/28/2026; sold the remaining shares for $4.20 on 7/8/2026. Profit: 170%. Signal: Market Watchers.

Options

Comments

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

Our lone stock exit was Sivers Semiconductors, which we bought at $2.24 in April because it has no listed options. We sold it in tranches: half at $6.75 in May, a third of the remainder at $7.61 two weeks later, and the rest at $4.20 this week, for a blended 170% gain. The tranche discipline captured most of the spike; holding the last piece for more cost us some of it as the stock faded. SIVEF is back on our watchlist after recent insider buying, but the chart needs repair before we’d reenter.

Options

A Clean Sweep

All twelve options exits this week were profitable. That won’t happen every week—losers tend to collect at expirations, and July OpEx is next Friday—but this list shows the machine working end to end: put spreads harvested near their floors, short calls bought back after collecting most of their premium, and four full combos closed at multiples of their cost.

The Calendar Harvest

Four exits came from the same maneuver. When a stock runs through both call strikes in one of our hybrids, the standing $0.20 order to buy back the short call stops being realistic, so we cancel it and sell the calendar—both call legs together—near its maximum value. That’s how uniQure (80%), Twist Bioscience (336% on premium outlay), GlobalFoundries (454% on net debit), and Moderna (491%) closed. Moderna shows the arithmetic cleanly: we entered the combo for a $1.15 net debit in April, paid $0.20 to exit the put spread in June, and sold the calendar for $7.00 this week.

Short Calls Bought Back, Upside Uncapped

We bought back short calls on AstraZeneca (96% on premium collected) and Fluence Energy (92%), leaving our October $220 AZN call and November $31 FLNC call uncapped. The put spread exits on Cemex and Calumet did the same kind of work from the other side: the financing legs closed at or below our standard $0.20 exit, while the four October $14 CX calls and the Calumet call calendar stay on. We also posted GTC sell targets on five of our uncapped long calls this week, in the comments under their trade alerts and via chat/email.

Opera’s Long Tail

The Opera combo, opened in early December, posted this week’s best number: 580% on premium outlay. We closed the put spread back in February, sold half of the July $15 calls at $4.50 in May, and sold the other half at $5.40 this week, eleven days before they would have expired.

Thirteen exits, thirteen winners. Same process throughout: define the risk at entry, let the short legs help pay for the trade, and give the long calls room to work.

Trade Alert: Hands Up

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:05:54 GMT

Watch The Hands

Yesterday after the close, the CEO of humanoid robotics company 1X posted a demo of his robot’s new tendon-driven hands—25 degrees of freedom, “nearing or surpassing human-level dexterity, strength, speed, and reliability.” It’s at about six million views as of this writing.

His framing is the interesting part: for seventy years, robotics worked around the hand problem. The humanoid bet is the reverse—it lives or dies at the fingertips.

Dexterous hands are an actuator-density story. Every finger joint needs a tiny motor, a drive, a sensor, and precision control, and each step toward human-level dexterity multiplies the precision-motion content per robot. The companies that supply those components are the fingertips of the fingertips.

A Core Theme, Not A New One

Embodied AI has been one of our core themes for over a year. In May, we noted Nvidia’s CEO calling the AI factory buildout “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history”—and Nvidia carving out physical AI, including robotics, as its own.

Today the theme comes to us through our process instead of the other way around: one of today’s Market Watchers trades is a precision-motion company in that space that just hit our technical buy zone, reclaiming a key moving average in this morning’s premarket.

The Other Two Trades

Chips sold off around the world this week after Samsung’s record quarter got sold hard, then semis led Thursday’s rebound. Our other two trades today use that whipsaw the way we like to: bullish, defined-risk option structures on names in the AI-hardware supply chain, with put premium financing the upside. One is from our
Multibaggers list. Multibaggers are a handful of accounts from our Market Watchers X list with documented recent 100%+ winners.

Full details on all three trade are below.

Today’s First Market Watchers Trade

Precision motion control / humanoid robotics theme

Screen data: RSI 51; Chartmill Technical Rating 10; Chartmill Setup Rating 6; Chartmill Fundamental Rating 6.

Top Names, 7/9/2026

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:10:12 GMT

Round Trip

Last week’s Top Names post ended with momentum carnage in AI hardware. This week so far has compressed a full cycle of it into four sessions: a record close Monday, a global chip rout Tuesday, an oil spike Wednesday, and a semiconductor-led rebound Thursday. By Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had round-tripped back above Monday’s levels, with the Nasdaq up 1.3% on the day as chips staged a comeback.

Samsung Sold The News

Monday opened with SemiAnalysis floating another bearish AI-hardware note, this one claiming Nvidia‘s () Kyber architecture could slip by up to a year. Nvidia’s response: “Our roadmap is intact.” The market sided with Nvidia, and the Dow closed at a record above 53,000.

Then Samsung estimated a nearly 19-fold increase in Q2 operating profit—and chip stocks sold off around the world, with the KOSPI falling hard enough to trigger circuit breakers. When a record quarter gets sold that hard, the problem is expectations and positioning, not demand.

Oil Piled On

Wednesday brought a second stress test: attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. revoking Iran’s oil-sales waivers sent crude up more than 6%, with Brent back above $75. Energy and defensives caught a bid while the Nasdaq fell 1.2%. The market spent three weeks pricing the ceasefire as a peace; this week it repriced it as a ceasefire.

The Demand Data Went One Way

While the tape whipsawed, the evidence kept stacking up on the same side. Penguin Solutions () reported record revenue, up 48%, raised guidance, and tied both directly to AI-driven demand for memory and infrastructure; the stock jumped more than 25%. TrendForce reported memory makers have notified customers of another round of Q3 contract-price hikes. And SK Hynix’s upcoming U.S. ADR offering was reportedly more than seven times oversubscribed. By Thursday, semis were leading the market again, with Micron () up 4.5% and oil falling back. We laid out the fuller case in this morning’s free post:

Where The System Is Leaning

Tonight’s top ten reads like a bill of materials for the AI buildout: optical networking, connectivity chips, the electronics manufacturers that assemble the hardware, and the power equipment that keeps it running, plus a defense-drone name. The system that’s nearly doubled the market’s return since we launched this Substack (more on that below) is leaning the same way we’ve been trading.

Our Basic Strategy

Our basic strategy is to buy equal dollar amounts of the Portfolio Armor web app’s top ten names, put trailing stops of ~20% on them, and replace them with names from the current week’s top ten when we get stopped out of a position—there are no options involved in this strategy.

Another Use For Our Top Names

We also use our top names in options trades, such as this one we exited last month:

4-leg combo on Lam Research (LRCX -1.25%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.84 on 4/2/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/13/2026 and exited the call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/15/2026. Profit: 829% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 119%). Signal: Top Names.

A Top Names Performance Update

Before we get to this week’s top ten names, let’s look at the final, 6-month performance of our top ten names from January 8th.

Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from January 8th, 2026 returned +45.12%, versus +8.06% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).

Screen capture via the Portfolio Armor iPhone app, which is available again on the App Store now.

So far, we have 6-month returns for 159 weekly top names cohorts since we started this Substack at the end of December, 2022.

[Skipping ahead so this post doesn’t exceed email length—you can see the top names returns for every week here]

And as you can see above, our top names have averaged returns of 18.31% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.68%. You can see an interactive version of the table above here, where you can click on each date and see a chart showing each of the holdings that week.

This Week’s Top Names

Below are Portfolio Armor’s current top ten names as of Thursday’s close.

Trade Alert: Adjustments, 7/9/2026

Portfolio Armor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:34:43 GMT

Game-Time Adjustments

I said I wasn’t going to adjust trades if I started sending out alerts before the open, but I don’t like not getting any fills for two days straight, so I am making adjustments. Going forward, I will do this at my discretion, and when I do, I will use a similar title.

The trades from our alert from earlier today haven’t filled, and …

Trade Alert: Three Swings At The AI Stack

Portfolio Armor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:08:52 GMT

Adjusted Trade Alert

The orders in the alert below were later adjusted in this post,

Still Above The 50-Day EMA

Yesterday’s trades didn’t fill, but two of the names still pass our screens this morning, and both are still trading above their 50-day exponential moving averages.

So we’re trying again with new structures.

The 50-day EMA screen remains useful in this tape. A stock can look “not overbought” simply because it has fallen hard and paused. Requiring new bullish trade candidates to be above their 50-day EMA helps us avoid names that are already breaking down.

Today’s third trade also passes that screen. It’s above its 50-day EMA and appears to be bouncing above its 21-day EMA in the premarket.

Three Different AI-Stack Angles

Today’s trades give us three different ways to express the broader AI-infrastructure theme. Two come from our Market Watchers X list; one comes from our Multibaggers subset of that list, comprised of accounts with documented recent >100% gainers.

The larger-cap trade sits in the enterprise AI / data-center hardware lane: servers, infrastructure, and the physical systems enterprises need as AI moves from pilot projects to real deployments.

The Multibaggers trade sits in a less obvious part of the stack: advanced semiconductor packaging and AI chip assembly/test. Chips don’t turn into deployable AI systems without packaging, testing, and manufacturing capacity behind them.

The micro-cap trade is the speculative slot. It’s a previous winner for us, and we exited a prior options trade in it last month for a gain of more than 500%. The stock has since pulled back sharply, but management has announced a share buyback and ended its ATM program.

The Speculative Setup

That capital-structure cleanup helps the setup.

The dilution story had been one of the obvious overhangs. Remove that overhang, add current short interest around 28%, and the name has dry kindling if a new catalyst hits.

That doesn’t make it a higher-probability trade. It makes it a high-convexity one. We’re pairing it with two cleaner AI-infrastructure trades where the theme, technicals, and business quality line up better.

Full details below.

Today’s First Market Watchers Trade

Enterprise AI / data-center infrastructure theme

Screen data: RSI 60; Chartmill Technical Rating 10; Chartmill Setup Rating 6; Chartmill Fundamental Rating 6; trading above its 50-day EMA.

More Evidence The AI Boom Has Legs

Portfolio Armor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 06:22:32 GMT

Apocalypse Not Now

In “AI Apocalypse” last week, we wrote about drivers behind the sharp selloff in AI-infrastructure names.

Memory, photonics, optical networking, semiconductor equipment, power, and AI-infrastructure stocks were all hit. The bearish case was familiar: the AI buildout had run too far, expectations were stretched, and investors were starting to question how much of the capex cycle was real.

In that post, we wrote that the evidence still showed the AI buildout was real:

The evidence still says the AI buildout is real. Memory, storage, optics, power, cooling, and data-center infrastructure remain bottlenecks. The better-positioned companies are generating rapidly ramping revenue and earnings from that demand.

This week, Penguin Solutions () offered more evidence of that.

Penguin Solutions’ Blowout Quarter

Most investors probably haven’t heard of Penguin. That’s part of why we like it.

Penguin Solutions is an AI-infrastructure company focused on memory, high-performance computing, and AI-factory deployment. Its platform combines infrastructure software, advanced memory, compute systems, services, and partner solutions to help customers deploy and scale AI workloads.

On Tuesday, Penguin reported record quarterly revenue of $479 million, up 48% from the year-ago quarter. GAAP operating income rose 417%. Non-GAAP EPS rose 79%. Management raised full-year guidance for both sales and EPS.

The stock jumped more than 25% the next day.

That market reaction is worth noting because Penguin sells into the physical layer of the AI buildout: memory, compute systems, infrastructure software, and deployment services.

CEO Kash Shaikh said Penguin’s AI Factory Platform strategy is working, that Integrated Memory sales more than doubled year over year, and that its AI Infrastructure business continued to build momentum. He also said the company is seeing “very strong AI-driven customer demand for memory and AI infrastructure solutions.”

That’s evidence.

The bearish AI narrative says demand is cracking. Penguin’s quarter says demand is still moving through the infrastructure stack.

Memory Continues To Be A Bottleneck

The most important line in Penguin’s release may have been this one:

“As inference and agentic AI workloads become more persistent and context-rich, memory is increasingly becoming one of the primary performance and scalability bottlenecks.”

That lines up with what we’ve been seeing across the AI stack.

Training got most of the early attention. Inference is where the infrastructure problem keeps expanding. More agents, longer context windows, persistent workloads, enterprise deployments, and real-time AI systems all increase pressure on memory and systems architecture.

Penguin’s numbers reflect that.

Integrated Memory sales more than doubled year over year. Penguin added four new AI Infrastructure customer logos in the quarter. It also became an NVIDIA AI Factory Specialized Partner.

Memory Pricing Data Provides More Evidence

TrendForce reported Wednesday that, according to Taiwanese media citing ADATA Chairman Simon Chen, memory makers have notified customers of another Q3 contract-price increase: DRAM up 20%–30% and NAND Flash up 35%–40%.

ADATA is a Taiwanese memory and storage company. It sells DRAM modules, SSDs, flash products, and related storage gear, so its chairman’s comments are a useful read-through on real memory-market tightness.

TrendForce’s own Q3 forecast was less aggressive than the ADATA numbers, but still pointed the same way: DRAM contract prices up another 13%–18% and NAND Flash contract prices up 10%–15%. TrendForce tied the tightness to AI server demand, AI inference, large-scale data-center deployments, and capacity being reallocated toward server applications.

That’s the backdrop Penguin is selling into.

The AI buildout isn’t just Nvidia. It’s the physical stack: memory, compute systems, networking, power, cooling, infrastructure software, and deployment services.

Penguin sits right in that layer.

How We Traded It

We included a PENG trade for Portfolio Armor subscribers in this alert on June 25th,

This was the trade:

Today’s Market Watchers Trade
AI compute infrastructure / HPC / memory systems theme
The stock is Penguin Solutions (PENG 16.51%↑), and our trade is a hybrid combo consisting of these four legs:
Buying the October 16th, 2026 $80 call,
Selling the September 18th, 2026 $85 call,
Selling the October 16th, 2026 $50 put,
Buying the October 16th, 2026 $45 put,
At a max net debit of $1.60. The max gain on 1 contract is about $1,250 (if the short September $85 call expires in-the-money; if it expires out-of-the-money, or we buy-to-close it before then, our upside will be uncapped), and the max loss is $660.
This trade filled at $1.40.

The key to understanding that structure is that the long October $80 call alone cost $13.95 then (it traded at close to $20 yesterday). Instead of simply buying that call, we sold other options around it and brought the cost of the whole bullish structure down to $1.40.

That gave us bullish exposure to the same AI-infrastructure theme while costing a tenth of what we would have paid to simply buy the call outright.

This is why we keep talking about harvesting volatility.

When these names are volatile, options get expensive. Buying that volatility outright can work, but it can also mean paying too much for the right idea. We’d rather sell part of that volatility, lower the cost of entry, and keep the upside asymmetric.

The Barbell Still Works

We’ve been describing our current approach as a barbell.

On one end, we have speculative convexity trades: smaller names where one catalyst can produce outsized returns. On the other end, we have higher-probability theme-continuation trades: companies where the theme, technicals, and fundamentals already line up.

Our recent Micron trade was an example of the second side of that barbell.

In Time To Get Back Into Micron, we wrote that the better AI-infrastructure names were still selling real products into real demand, with revenues and earnings moving sharply higher alongside their share prices.

Micron had just strengthened that point with a blowout quarter and commentary about tight memory supply lasting beyond calendar 2027.

Penguin strengthened it again this week.

The company reported record results, raised guidance, and tied the raise directly to AI-driven demand in memory and AI infrastructure. The stock’s reaction confirmed that investors understood the read-through.

Penguin was a less obvious way to express the same broader theme: AI compute infrastructure, memory systems, and the buildout of real AI factories.

The evidence keeps pointing the same way.

The AI buildout is still real. The physical stack is still seeing demand. Some of the best opportunities may be in the companies supplying the infrastructure behind the boom—not just the headline names everyone already owns.

Trade Alert: AI Infrastructure And Open RAN

Portfolio Armor — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:26:27 GMT

Another Falling-Knife Check

In light of current market conditions, we’re adding another technical screen to our process: new bullish trade candidates should be trading above their 50-day exponential moving average.

Relative Strength Index, Chartmill Technical Rating, and Chartmill Setup Rating already do a lot of work for us. But in a chaotic tape, a stock can look “not overbought” simply because it has fallen hard and paused. The 50-day EMA gives us one more sanity check.

Like our other technical screens, this doesn’t mean a stock that passes won’t later fall through that level. It means it isn’t in the process of falling through it now. It may seem like common sense to try to avoid falling knives, but sometimes we need rules to keep ourselves from doing that.

Back To The Barbell

Today’s two trades sit on opposite sides of our barbell.

On one end, we have a high-convexity trade in a micro-cap previous winner for us. We exited a prior options trade in this name last month for a gain of more than 500%. The stock has since pulled back roughly 50%, but management has now announced a share buyback and ended its ATM program.

That matters because the dilution story had been one of the obvious overhangs. Remove that overhang, add current short interest around 28%, and you have dry kindling if a new catalyst hits.

On the other end, we have a larger-cap AI-infrastructure trade. This one sits in the enterprise AI / data-center hardware lane: servers, infrastructure, and the physical systems enterprises need as AI moves from pilot projects to real deployments.

That side of the barbell is less explosive, but it’s also cleaner. The theme is current, the business is tied directly to AI infrastructure spending, and the chart is still above its 50-day EMA.

One trade gives us speculative upside torque. The other gives us a more established AI-infrastructure setup, but one that can still give us a >150% return if things go well.

Full details below.

Today’s First Market Watchers Trade

Enterprise AI / data-center infrastructure theme

Screen data: RSI 57; Chartmill Technical Rating 9; Chartmill Setup Rating 8; Chartmill Fundamental Rating 6; trading above its 50-day EMA.

Trade Alert: Harvesting The AI Whipsaw

Portfolio Armor — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:00:06 GMT

FUD, Rebuttals, And Volatility

In AI Apocalypse last week, we noted a suspsicious sequence: SemiAnalysis helped trigger a sharp pullback in AI-infrastructure names with bearish research, and then two new ETFs launched with SemiAnalysis as research partner—giving those ETFs a chance to buy some of the same names after the reset.

Monday gave us another version of that movie.

SemiAnalysis came out with another bearish AI-hardware note, this time about a potential delay in Nvidia’s Kyber architecture. Investors.com reported that SemiAnalysis said Kyber could be delayed by up to 12 months into 2028. An Nvidia spokesperson denied the report, telling IBD, “Our roadmap is intact.”

Then Korea added its own stress test.

Samsung estimated it would post a nearly 19-fold increase in Q2 operating profit. Korean stocks sold off anyway, with the KOSPI falling hard enough to trigger circuit breakers.

That tells us something useful. The issue isn’t demand. It’s expectations, leverage, and positioning.

Our System Still Likes The AI Stack

As of Monday night’s close, Portfolio Armor’s Top Ten leaned heavily into the AI trade.

That lines up with Nvidia’s response that its roadmap remains intact. It also lines up with the broader evidence we’ve been pointing to for months: the AI buildout is still real, and the bottlenecks remain in the physical stack.

The volatility is useful.

When bearish narratives hit the group, option premiums rise. We can harvest that premium to lower the cost of bullish structures, improve asymmetry, and in some cases get paid to take on defined-risk bullish exposure.

The Barbell

Our trades sit on a barbell.

On one end, we have speculative convexity trades. Those are lower-priced names where a big catalyst—drug approval, policy shift, hyperscaler customer, major order—can produce returns of 10x or more. Current fundamentals often lag the story there. That’s part of the setup.

On the other end, we have higher-probability theme-continuation trades. Those are names where the theme, technicals, and fundamentals already line up. The potential return if the stocks hit the high end of the option market’s expected movement is more like 1-3x, but the trade can still be modestly profitable if the stock drifts sideways, or even declines by 10% or 15%.

Three of today’s trades fit that second category. They give us AI-stack exposure after the pullback, with defined risk, favorable option pricing, and decent-to-strong technical and fundamental screens.

The fourth trade gives us a non-AI diversifier with a strong setup.

Full details on all four trades below.

Today’s First Market Watchers Trade

AI connectivity / data-center interconnect theme

Screen data: RSI 55; Chartmill Technical Rating 10; Chartmill Setup Rating 6; Chartmill Fundamental Rating 7.

Poll Question For Paid Subscribers

Portfolio Armor — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:43:35 GMT

Responding To Feedback

Recently, I received feedback from a couple of subscribers suggesting they felt overwhelmed by the number of trades/trade alerts.

What I’ve Been Doing

The night after every trading day, I go through Portfolio Armor’s Top Names, and our other sources of alpha looking for compelling trade ideas; if I find them, I post trade alerts o…

AI Apocalypse

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 22:56:02 GMT

AI Apocalypse

AI-related momentum names got hammered Thursday.

Memory, photonics, optical networking, semiconductor equipment, power, and AI-infrastructure names were a sea of red. Some of these stocks had already sold off before Thursday, but Thursday turned the pullback into a momentum apocalypse.

The putative reason was familiar: the AI buildout had run too far, too fast. Concerns about excess AI compute, stretched valuations, co-packaged optics delays, and future capex digestion all got bundled into one big bearish trade.

That’s the surface explanation. The more interesting story is the chronology behind it.

We Warned About This Last Month

A lot of the recent AI-hardware FUD was sparked by two SemiAnalysis reports last month.

SemiAnalysis is Dylan Patel’s semiconductor and AI research firm. It covers the AI supply chain: chips, packaging, networking, optics, memory, datacenters, and infrastructure. Its work reaches institutional investors, and in crowded trades, institutional narratives can move prices.

After the second SemiAnalysis report hit in June, we published “Reject The FUD” on ZeroHedge. The Portfolio Armor version was included in this trade alert:

Here’s the key passage from that post:

Markets aren’t populated by disinterested monks.
Plenty of institutions missed parts of the AI-infrastructure rally, and some of them would welcome better entry points.

It appears one of the parties looking for better entry points was SemiAnalysis itself.

SemiAnalysis Gets Its Entry Points

On June 30th, Tema launched the Tema Photonics & Optical ETF (), in research partnership with SemiAnalysis. Two of its top holdings:

Tema launched the Tema Memory ETF (DISK) the same day, also in research partnership with SemiAnalysis. Two of its top holdings:

The sequence is simple:

SemiAnalysis published bearish AI-hardware research last month, including work on co-packaged optics and related names.
Memory, photonics, and AI-infrastructure stocks sold off hard.
Tema launched two SemiAnalysis-linked ETFs on June 30.
Those ETFs bought exposure to the same baskets, including several names hit by the selloff.

That chronology doesn’t need much embroidery. A research shop whose bearish reports poured cold water on a hot trade ended up linked to ETFs buying that same trade after the reset.

Investors can draw their own conclusions.

The Incentives Flipped

Before the pullback, institutions that missed the AI-hardware rally had an obvious problem: chase vertical charts or wait for lower prices.

After the pullback, the incentives look different. Better entry points are here. The institutions and funds that wanted exposure now have it, or at least have a cleaner shot at building it.

That matters because narratives follow positioning. When investors want in, bearish concerns get amplified. Once they’re in, the same investors have an incentive to emphasize the long-term bull case again.

We may have seen an early hint of that overseas. Korea bounced on Friday, with SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics rallying after the U.S. momentum flush. Korea is one of the purest global expressions of the AI-memory trade, so that rebound is worth watching when U.S. markets reopen.

How We Traded It

We got back into Micron, and three other AI-related names on Thursday.

One of the other three names we got back into in that alert: Sandisk (). Nice to know one of the top research shops shares our bullishness on those names.

Of course, it’s not our first rodeo with either name:

4-leg combo on SanDisk (SNDK -13.92%↓). Entered at a net debit of $1.78 on 12/4/2025; exited the Mar ’26 250–270 call spread at $16.00 on 1/15/2026; exited the Mar ’26 180–175 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 1/21/2026. Profit: 788% on premium outlay (188% on max risk).
4-leg combo on Micron Technology (MU -6.25%↓). Entered at a net debit of $2.62 on 3/3/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/8/2026; exited the call spread at a net credit of $16.00 on 5/5/2026. Profit: 504% (return on max risk: 173%). Signal: PA Top Names.

Evidence Over Fear

We’ll keep separating evidence from fear.

The evidence still says the AI buildout is real. Memory, storage, optics, power, cooling, and data-center infrastructure remain bottlenecks. The better-positioned companies are generating rapidly ramping revenue and earnings from that demand.

The FUD says every pullback is the beginning of the end.

We’ll let logic, evidence, and price guide our trades.

Top Names, 7/2/2026

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 03:49:18 GMT

Momentum Carnage

For index investors heading into Independence Day weekend, this was a nice week. The Dow gained about 2% and closed Thursday at another record. The S&P 500 rose about 1.8%. The Nasdaq gained about 2.1% despite giving back ground on Thursday.

The AI buildout has been one of our core themes though, so for us those names were a sea of red today.

AI Hardware Got Hammered

The Nasdaq fell Thursday as semiconductors, memory, storage, power, and AI-infrastructure names got hammered. The semiconductor index dropped more than 5% on the day, and number of AI-adjacent names where we have exposure were down more than 10%.

The Overcapacity Worry Returned

The catalyst was easy enough to spot. AI hardware had just finished a huge first-half run. Then reports that Meta () may sell excess AI compute capacity gave investors a fresh reason to worry about overbuild and future chip demand.

That concern hit the obvious places: chips, memory, storage, power, cooling, and the broader AI-infrastructure stack. AI infrastructure has been one of our core themes this year, so we felt that move.

Getting Back Into Micron

We took advantage of today’s pullback to get back into Micron (). You can read our rationale for that below, in case you missed it.

A Better Day For Biotech

Biotech has been another core theme for us, and it helped balance Thursday’s tape. A number of biotech names where we have positions were up solidly today, including Moderna (), Nektar Therapeutics (), and Sana Biotechnology ( ).

Alignment After The Shakeout

In our trade alert earlier today, we wrote about how we’ve been leaning more toward names with stronger fundamentals in this tape. As it happens, our system’s top two names as of today’s close were two of the stocks in today’s alert. They weren’t top names last night, but their inclusion in tonight’s top ten is reassuring: it shows that our instincts are aligned with the logic of a system that’s nearly doubled the performance of the market since we started this Substack.

Our Basic Strategy

Another Use For Our Top Names

We also use our top names in options trades, such as this one we exited last month:

4-leg combo on Lam Research (LRCX -1.25%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.84 on 4/2/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/13/2026 and exited the call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/15/2026. Profit: 829% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 119%). Signal: Top Names.

A Top Names Performance Update

Before we get to this week’s top ten names, let’s look at the final, 6-month performance of our top ten names from December 31st of last year.

Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from December 31st, 2025 returned +20.50%, versus +9.45% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).

Screen capture via the Portfolio Armor iPhone app, which was supposed to be back in the app store by now.

We have returns for 157 rolling 6-month returns since we started this Substack in December of 2022 here, but we should have 158—for some reason, the 12/31 top names cohort isn’t listed there yet. As of last week, our top names had returned +18.13% on average over the next six months, versus +9.69% for SPY.

This Week’s Top Names

Below are Portfolio Armor’s current top ten names as of Thursday’s close.

Exits, 7/2/2026

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:46:29 GMT

This Week’s Trade Exits

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

None.

Options

Comments

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

No exits this week, as I haven’t been doing our basic strategy, which involves buying stocks and ETFs, and have been focusing on options instead. Nevertheless, the performance of our system’s top names over the next six months continues to be strong, as you can see below, with the 6-month performance of our top names from New Year’s Eve of last year.

Options

Cleanup And Premium Harvesting

This week’s options list starts with two losses because we list exits from worst to best. The full set was solid: 9 options exits, 7 profitable, and several positions improved by buying back short calls that had done their job.

The Eos Energy loss is a useful process marker. We opened that trade in early November, before applying our current Relative Strength Index + Chartmill setup rating checks to filter out overextended names. Under the process we use now, a name that stretched likely wouldn’t have made it through those screens.

The Planet Labs Context

Although we took a loss on the Planet Labs call leg, this trade may still end up modestly profitable. We bought the July $35 call for $7.54 as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo and sold it this week for $1.25. We had already bought-to-close the short June $40 call for $0.20, and if we can buy back the July $30/$25 put spread for $0.20 before expiration, the full trade will close for a small net profit.

That’s why we track the legs carefully. The long call leg tells only part of the story in a multi-leg trade.

Short Calls Bought Back

Four of this week’s exits were short-call buybacks: Digi Power X, Babcock & Wilcox, Almonty Industries, and Himax Technologies.

In each case, we sold the short call as part of a 4-leg hybrid combo, then bought it back for $0.20 after collecting most of the original premium. Those exits produced profits of 84%, 86%, 87%, and 90% on premium collected.

Buying back the short calls leaves us with uncapped upside potential if the stocks rebound.

July OpEx Review

Some of this week’s cleanup flowed from the July 2026 OpEx Review.

The review gave us a structured way to revisit trades with July-expiring legs before expiration week. That process pulled several decisions forward and kept the standing orders aligned with the current setup.

Full Combos And Call Exits

The Omada Health combo was another process marker. At the time, we were using shorter-dated put financing (in part, to free up dry powder sooner), but a drawback of that is those shorter-dated put legs are more vulnerable to a near-term pullback. We ended up with a 42% profit on premium outlay on this trade, as the stock hit new highs before our long calls expired, but if we had used longer-dated put financing, we would have made more money on this trade.

Silvercorp Metals was another profitable full-combo exit. We sold half of the July $7.50 calls in January for $6.90, which more than paid for the trade and locked in a strong profit. We kept the other half as a runner, in the event silver climbed higher, but it did the opposite. So we cleaned up the remaining calls this week for $0.02. The full combo returned 145% on premium outlay.

BlackBerry was the strongest call-side exit this week. We sold one-quarter of the calls for a 434% gain after buying them for $1.16 as part of a 3-leg combo.

This week had cleanup, one legacy-process loss, one call-leg loss that may still leave the full combo profitable, several mechanical short-call buybacks, and a few strong call-side winners. That mix fits the way we trade: define the risk at entry, harvest premium when it decays, and keep enough upside open for the names that keep working.

Trade Alert: Time To Get Back Into Micron

Portfolio Armor — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:31:47 GMT

Back In Range

Last week, in “Partying Like It’s Still Not 1999”, we wrote that Micron’s blowout earnings and guidance supported our argument that the current AI boom isn’t just a rerun of the dot-com bubble.

The better AI-infrastructure names are producing real revenues, real earnings, and real demand signals. That’s a very different backdrop from 1999. At the time, we said we weren’t planning to chase Micron after its post-earnings run-up.

Now the stock has pulled back.

The pullback has been sector-wide. After a huge first-half run in AI hardware and memory names, investors have started rotating out of some of the biggest winners, helped along by renewed concerns about AI infrastructure spending and future overcapacity.

That’s exactly why we waited. Micron’s earnings helped confirm the demand side of the thesis, but the post-earnings spike left the stock stretched. This week’s pullback has moved it back into our preferred entry range.

Fundamentals Get A Vote

We’re not just looking at technicals here—we’re looking at fundamentals too.

In “Fundamentals Get A Vote”, we wrote about why fundamentals matter more in a whipsaw market.

Technical strength can get us into good setups, but stronger fundamentals can help those setups survive volatility. That applies to today’s trades.

We’re looking at four names that pass our technical screens and also have decent-to-strong fundamental scores. They aren’t all the same trade. One is tied to memory. One is tied to storage. One is tied to chip architecture. One is a less obvious IT infrastructure/channel name that surfaced from Portfolio Armor’s Top Names.

The common thread is process. We have attractive themes, acceptable fundamentals, clean technicals, and defined-risk structures with asymmetric upside potential.

Priced To Fill, But Not To Be Chased

We priced each structure using three options-pricing methods: Black-Scholes, Bjerksund-Stensland, and Cox-Ross-Rubinstein/binomial. Then we used the most conservative fair-value estimate from the three.

One of these trades has a debit, meaning we’re paying premium to enter the trade; the other three are credit trades, meaning we’re collecting premium to place them. For the debit trade, we’re making sure that the net debit we pay is below conservative fair value. For the credit trades, we’re making sure the net credit we collect is above conservative fair value.

That’s the discipline.

We’re either going to get filled on terms that are favorable versus model value, or we’re not going to take the trades.

We’re not chasing.

Our Micron structure is designed to generate a 192% return on max risk if Micron reaches the high end of the options market’s implied range over the next several months. It can also produce a modest profit if Micron drifts sideways or even declines somewhat over that period.

Full details below, including our pre-set exit orders so we can cash out of winning positions automatically without babysitting the trades.

Today’s First Top Names Trade

IT infrastructure / AI channel theme

Trade Alert: Swinging For The Fences

Portfolio Armor — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:16:55 GMT

Fresh Signals In Names We Already Know

Today’s trades are follow-on trades.

We already have live exposure or prior wins in all three, and we’re adding only where a fresh signal, a stronger setup, or a specific catalyst gives us a reason to take another defined-risk swing.

Two of today’s trades are follow-ons in names where our current trades are already deep in-the-money. In one of those, we’ve already taken partial profits and are letting the remaining exposure run.

The third is a little different.

That stock is roughly flat from where we entered the trade after surfacing it from our Market Watchers X list. Now we’re adding a new trade on it because it was Portfolio Armor’s #1 name last night.

When those two signals align—Market Watchers and our own Top Names system—we pay special attention. That’s especially true when the stock also sits in our technical Goldilocks zone: in an uptrend, but with an RSI that says it’s not overextended at all.

The QURE Exception

Usually, we don’t mention tickers in the free sections of our trade alerts, but we wrote about the broader setup for uniQure () recently in The Biology Won, after the FDA’s posture toward certain rare-disease and gene-therapy programs shifted.

QURE was one of the clearest beneficiaries, and one of our Multibaggers analysts had been right about it before the move. He now thinks QURE can hit $70 by the end of summer.

Today’s QURE trade is designed to nearly triple our money if that happens. And $70 isn’t an unreasonable target. It’s in the neighborhood of where QURE traded before last fall’s FDA rug pull crushed the stock.

The setup still isn’t a normal screen pass. The current fundamentals are weak, and the chart is extended. This is a policy-led rerating exception, not a standard technical/fundamental entry.

But the exception has earned its place.

Adding To Winners

Adding after a stock has already moved can be uncomfortable, but the question is whether the current setup still offers attractive, defined-risk upside.

In these three cases, we have different reasons to say yes.

The Top Names trade has fresh ranking confirmation layered on top of an earlier Market Watchers signal. The Market Watchers trade has a fresh chart setup in a power-infrastructure name where our first trade has already worked. And the Multibaggers trade has a concrete target tied to a regulatory rerating thesis that has already paid off once.

Full details on all three trades below.

Today’s Top Names Trade

Telecom infrastructure / AI connectivity theme

Trade Alert: Fundamentals Get A Vote

Portfolio Armor — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:08:54 GMT

Same Sources Of Alpha, Tighter Selection

Our main inputs haven’t changed.

We’re still starting with Portfolio Armor’s Top Names, our most consistent source of alpha. We’re still using our Market Watchers X list as another source of ideas, along with our elite subset of that list: our Multibaggers: accounts with recent, documented, >100% winners. And we’re still filtering entries with the same technical screens: RSI, Chartmill Technical Rating, and Chartmill Setup Rating.

The tweak is more specific: in this choppy tape, we’re giving fundamentals a little more weight.

Friday’s trade alert made that point after the Korea selloff.

The AI buildout still has legs, but the market is getting more selective about who actually benefits. That makes us more interested in names where the theme, technical setup, and current fundamentals all line up.

Top Names Aligned With The Tape

As of Friday’s close, Portfolio Armor’s Top Names were already leaning in that direction.

Most of the top ten had solid fundamentals, including a few names where we already have recent trades. That’s useful confirmation. It means we don’t have to choose between our highest-ranked names and our current preference for stronger companies.

Today’s Top Names trades come from that overlap. They pass our technical screens, they sit in real infrastructure themes, and they have better current fundamental ratings than many of the more speculative names in this part of the market.

One of today’s Top Names trades is also a repeat winner for us. In addition, we have an open trade from March on it that’s well in-the-money. We’re adding longer-dated bullish exposure here because the company remains one of the best under-the-radar plays on reindustrialization and the AI power buildout.

When Policy Trumps The Screen

There is one exception today.

Potential policy-led biotech re-ratings don’t fit neatly into our usual technical and fundamental screen framework. When a regulatory shift changes the probability of approval, the market can reprice a stock faster than the screens can catch up.

We saw that recently with uniQure () and ClearPoint Neuro () , which we discussed in The Biology Won.

One Multibaggers account had been pounding the table on both names ahead of the recent change in FDA leadership, and both re-rated sharply after the agency’s posture shifted.

That same account now sees similar potential in two other biotech names, for the same reason. Given that track record, we’re making an explicit exception to our technical and fundamental preferences for those two trades.

Tracking What Works

We’re also going to start recording a few screen inputs directly in the paid sections: RSI, Chartmill Technical Rating, Chartmill Setup Rating, and Chartmill Fundamental Rating.

That’s mainly for our benefit. It gives us a cleaner record to review later. If certain combinations work better across future trades, we want to see that in the results rather than rely on memory.

For the biotech exceptions, we’ll still record the stats. The point is not to pretend they pass our normal screens. The point is to mark clearly why we made the exception.

The goal here is to keep taking selective swings where the theme, the source, and the option pricing line up. Most of today’s trades fit the framework which includes technical and fundamental checks. Two of them fit a different one: a policy-led re-rating thesis from a source that already got the last two big ones right.

Full details below.

Today’s First Top Names Trade

AI data-center manufacturing / compute infrastructure theme

Screen data: RSI 44; Chartmill Technical Rating 9; Setup Rating 6; Fundamental Rating 6.

July 2026 OpEx Review

Portfolio Armor — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:04:39 GMT

July 2026 OpEx Review

Last month, we lost money on a couple of options positions that were profitable a few weeks before expiration. This is one area where I’ve been remiss, in that I’ve generally waited until OpEx week to look over my expiring positions. I’m starting a new practice where at the end of the month, I’ll go through everything expiring on th…

Exits, 6/26/2026

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:58:13 GMT

This Week’s Trade Exits

As soon as I exit a trade, I note that in the comments of the post where I first mentioned the trade; at the end of the week, I try to track them all in one post. Starting in July, 2024, I have also been tracking them in this spreadsheet. These are the trades I exited this week.

Stocks or Exchange Traded Products

None.

Options

Options

Harvesting Premium In A Choppy Tape

This was a strong week on the options side: 8 exits, 8 winners (our losing options exits tend to collect on OpEx days, because our winners tend to trigger our pre-set exit orders before expiration; you can see examples of those in June’s OpEx day Exits post).

That was especially useful in a week when the broader tape was anything but smooth. As we discussed in last night’s Top Names post, the AI buildout still has legs, but the market is getting more selective about where those gains accrue.

This week’s action reflected that: tech and semiconductor stocks were under pressure as Korea’s memory trade whipsawed.

That is exactly the sort of environment where our structures do their jobs.

Short Calls Bought Back

Four of this week’s exits were short-call buybacks.

We bought back the short calls in Hyliion Holdings, Lightwave Logic, Urban Outfitters, and American Superconductor after collecting most of the original premium. Those weren’t full trade exits, but they were important. Buying back the short calls for $0.20 removed the cap from the long-call side of those hybrids and left us with cleaner upside exposure if the stocks bounce back.

That’s one of the main advantages of these hybrid structures. We can use short-call premium to reduce the cost of entry, then buy those calls back after time decay and volatility work in our favor. When that happens, the trade improves: less cap, less friction, and more room for the long calls to climb.

Two Full Combo Exits

We also closed out two full combo trades this week.

The ACM Research combo returned 146% on premium, and 55% on max risk. The Ecopetrol combo returned 339%, and 140% on max risk.

Those are very different names and very different themes, but the mechanics were similar: enter with capped downside, resolve the put side, manage the call side, and let the remaining upside do the work.

The Ecopetrol exit is a good example of why we don’t need every trade to move immediately. We entered that trade in February, the short-dated pieces were resolved in March, and we sold the remaining August calls this week for a large gain. Sometimes the best thing the structure does is buy us time.

Letting Winners Run

The biggest call-side exits came from Nuvectis Pharma.

We sold half of the calls on Tuesday for a 366% gain, then sold the remaining half on Thursday for a 746% gain.

That is the reason we try to leave room for runners. The first sale locked in a large gain; the second sale captured a much larger move after the stock kept going.

Not every runner will do that, but when they do, they can more than make up for a lot of smaller premium-harvesting exits.

Process Over Prediction

This was the kind of week that can tempt investors to overreact.

Tech weakness, Korea contagion, shifting Hormuz headlines, and rapid factor rotation can make the market feel chaotic. But the exits this week were mostly mechanical: short calls hit our buyback targets, put spreads had already been resolved, and we sold call-side when they reached attractive levels.

That is the balance we want: stay aggressive where the upside is attractive, keep downside defined at entry, harvest premium when it decays, and let the strongest call-side winners become meaningful.

Trade Alert: Korea Crashes Again

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:14:45 GMT

Korea Crashes; AI Buildout Continues

In yesterday’s trade alert, we argued that the AI buildout still has legs.

Micron’s earnings were the latest evidence. The company’s results showed that AI memory demand remains intense, supply remains tight, and the bottlenecks created by the buildout are still showing up in real revenue and earnings.

Then Asian tech stocks sold off overnight.

Korea was hit especially hard, with memory and AI-related names giving back part of their Micron-driven gains. That raises the obvious question: if Micron’s report strengthened the AI-infrastructure thesis, why are some of the most AI-exposed markets still trading like this?

The answer is that both things can be true.

AI is real. It’s a revolutionary technology, and we’re still early in the economic consequences. It will show up in self-driving vehicles, robotics, drug discovery, defense, industrial automation, software, logistics, and the replacement or augmentation of skilled human labor.

But the market is still trying to figure out who actually benefits.

Earlier this year, that uncertainty hit software stocks. The “SaaS apocalypse” trade was partly about whether AI would help incumbents, commoditize their products, or force customers to rethink what they were willing to pay for.

Now we’re seeing a related debate about the largest AI and hyperscaler names. The buildout is real, but the costs are real too. Investors are asking who captures the economics: the companies buying the infrastructure, the companies selling the scarce components, or the companies one layer deeper in the supply chain.

That’s where our focus is narrowing.

Bottlenecks Over Buzzwords

We don’t want generic AI exposure for its own sake.

In this market, we’d rather have exposure to real bottlenecks: memory, optical networking, timing chips, power systems, cooling, energy storage, passive components, and the other physical pieces that have to exist before the AI future can scale.

We’re also putting a little more weight on fundamentals.

That doesn’t mean we’re turning into a backward-looking value screen. Many of the most interesting bottleneck names won’t look cheap on trailing numbers. But all else equal, in a choppy tape, we’d rather lean toward companies with at least okay fundamentals than names where the entire case depends on the market ignoring current weakness.

The other adjustment is structural.

Some of this volatility may be less about fundamentals and more about market structure: crowded AI positioning, levered products, retail leverage, factor rotations, and violent swings in the most popular expressions of the memory trade. We want to get paid for volatility.

That’s the thread running through today’s trades.

The Next Bottleneck

One of today’s themes is capacitors.

Zero Hedge had a good piece Thursday (“Capacitor Frenzy”) on multilayer ceramic capacitors, or MLCCs, as a possible next AI bottleneck. The basic idea is simple: AI servers don’t just need GPUs and memory. They need power delivered smoothly and instantly to those chips. MLCCs help regulate current, smooth spikes and drops, and filter noise so the system can run reliably.

As AI racks get more powerful, the number and quality of these components matter more.

The market already learned this lesson with memory. A boring component can become explosive when it turns into a bottleneck.

We already have an open trade in one MLCC-related name. Today, we’re adding more exposure to that theme.

We’re also adding exposure to precision timing for AI infrastructure, another essential part of high-performance computing systems. And we’re keeping one foot in biotech infrastructure, where the theme is not one binary drug trial, but the tools and containment systems needed for injectable drugs, biologics, and GLP-1-related demand.

Those are the kinds of themes we want here: not vague AI adjacency, but tangible infrastructure.

Using Structure Again

Volatility is high, spreads are wide, and several of these names have already moved. So we’re using options structures to lower our entry cost and give us asymmetric upside relative to risk.

In one of today’s MLCC-related trades, the call we want is trading around $13. Instead of simply buying that call, we’re aiming to enter a trade structured around it for about one-tenth of that cost.

That’s the approach we want in this market: find real bottlenecks, filter them for names that also pass our technical and fundamental screens, and use option structures that let volatility work in our favor.

Full details below, including our pre-set exit orders, so we can harvest profits from these trades automatically if they go our way.

Today’s Top Names Trade

Precision timing / AI infrastructure bottleneck theme

Top Names, 6/25/2026

Portfolio Armor — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 01:26:29 GMT

A Rough Week For Tech So Far

Last week, markets received a geopolitical tailwind as the U.S.–Iran agreement lowered oil prices and eased fears of a prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.

This week, investors found something else to worry about.

Through Thursday’s close, the Nasdaq was down 4.4% for the week, versus a 1.9% decline for the S&P 500. The weakness was concentrated in growth and tech: the Dow and Russell 2000 were both positive for the week through Thursday, while the technology sector and semiconductor stocks were still down despite Thursday’s rebound.

The worst of the damage came Tuesday. The semiconductor index fell about 8%, the Nasdaq lost more than 2%, and nearly $1 trillion was erased from the Nasdaq’s market value that day.

The concerns weren’t new: stretched valuations, debt-funded AI spending, higher bond yields, a stronger dollar, and a Fed with less room to ease. But after the extraordinary run in AI-related stocks, investors were suddenly less willing to overlook them.

The selling continued into Wednesday, leaving Micron’s earnings report after the close as an important test of whether the fundamentals could still justify the enthusiasm.

Micron Passes The Test

Micron passed that test emphatically.

As we discussed in today’s trade alert, its results showed that the AI boom has legs.

Revenue and earnings surged, customer commitments strengthened, and management said it still had no line of sight to when memory supply would catch up with demand.

Micron soared Thursday, and the strength spread across memory and semiconductor stocks.

The broader market reaction was more complicated. The semiconductor index rallied, but the Nasdaq still finished lower as Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet fell.

That divergence sums up the week so far. Investors haven’t abandoned the AI trade, but they’re becoming more selective. Micron’s report rewarded companies tied directly to near-term AI bottlenecks, especially memory supply. At the same time, the market remained willing to sell crowded mega cap AI leaders and the companies most exposed to questions about the scale, timing, and returns on AI capital spending.

Hormuz Risk Returns

The geopolitical picture followed a similar pattern.

For most of the week, oil continued to fall as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased. By Wednesday, Brent had dropped below its pre-war level, providing some relief from the energy shock that had driven inflation and interest-rate fears earlier this year.

Then, on Thursday, a cargo ship near Oman reported being struck by a projectile.

U.S. officials attributed the attack to Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said ships would only be guaranteed safe passage through routes designated by Tehran and warned that it would act against vessels that failed to comply. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would have a problem if Iran threatened or blocked shipping.

The U.N.’s International Maritime Organization responded by temporarily pausing its operation to help stranded ships leave the Gulf, and oil rose on the news.

The preliminary U.S.–Iran agreement has reduced the immediate risk of a broader oil shock, but Thursday’s events showed how fragile that improvement remains.

Inflation Complicates The Picture

Thursday’s economic data gave the market another reason for caution.

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure rose 4.1% from a year earlier in May, its highest reading in three years. First-quarter GDP was revised higher to 2.1%, while jobless claims fell more than expected.

A resilient economy is generally positive for earnings, but persistent inflation gives the Fed less room to ease and increases the risk of additional rate hikes. Renewed pressure on oil would make that problem harder.

Following The Scarcity

Against that backdrop, our latest rankings continue to favor companies tied to scarcity and physical bottlenecks.

AI infrastructure and semiconductors remain prominent, particularly the companies supplying the components and capacity behind the buildout. Power and energy infrastructure are also well represented, along with exposure that can benefit if oil remains firm.

That mix fits the market we saw this week.

Investors are still willing to reward genuine growth and scarcity, but they’re no longer lifting every AI-related stock together. Geopolitics and inflation remain capable of disrupting the broader tape, making selectivity more important than ever.

We remain bullish, but selective.

Our Basic Strategy

Another Use For Our Top Names

We also use our top names in options trades, such as this one we exited last week:

4-leg combo on Lam Research (LRCX -1.25%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.84 on 4/2/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/13/2026 and exited the call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/15/2026. Profit: 829% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 119%). Signal: Top Names.

A Top Names Performance Update

Before we get to this week’s top ten names, let’s look at the final, 6-month performance of our top ten names from December 24th of last year.

Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from December 24th, 2025 returned +25.60%, versus +6.29% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).

Screen capture via the Portfolio Armor iPhone app, which has been removed from the U.S. app store for some reason (waiting to hear back why from Apple).

So far, we have 6-month returns for 157 weekly top names cohorts since we started this Substack at the end of December, 2022.

[Skipping ahead so this post doesn’t exceed email length—you can see the top names returns for every week here]

And as you can see above, our top names have averaged returns of 18.13% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.69%. You can see an interactive version of the table above here, where you can click on each date and see a chart showing each of the holdings that week.

This Week’s Top Names

Below are Portfolio Armor’s current top ten names as of Thursday’s close.