Top Names, 3/12/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
A Brief Market Comment
Earlier today, in our latest trade alert, we addressed the obvious question of why we hadn’t said much more about the Iran war since Monday: while the war can affect market sentiment in the near term, the bullish trades we’re placing now are aimed several months out, and our base case is still that the conflict will be resolved by then. That remains our view tonight. We’re monitoring the war closely, and if it triggers another radical repricing in oil or some other asset class, we’ll look to trade that accordingly. But for now, we’re not going to force war-specific trades when better medium-term opportunities are showing up elsewhere.
That seems especially true after the market’s reaction over the last few days. Even with crude carriers burning in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf energy infrastructure under pressure, oil hasn’t moved as violently as it did during last weekend’s initial panic spike. That suggests the market is beginning to distinguish between a real geopolitical shock and the sort of open-ended energy catastrophe traders were briefly pricing in at the start. So while the war remains an important backdrop, we’re continuing to focus on names where the six-month setup still looks attractive.
Our Basic Strategy
Our basic strategy 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 week:
3-leg combo on Viavi Solutions (VIAV 1.75%↑). Entered for a net debit of $1.15 on 1/9/2026; exited the February $17/$15 put spread at a net debit of $0.16 on 1/28/2026; sold half of the June $19 calls for $11.20 on 2/27/2026 and the second half for $16.00 on 3/2/2026. Profit: 1,069% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 372%). Signal: PA 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 9/11/2025.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from September 11th, 2025 returned +3.17%, versus +2.84% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 141 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 20.24% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 10.05%. 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.
