Top Names, 3/19/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
A Brief Market Comment
The biggest development this week was probably the current Gulf War expanding to energy strikes. After an Israeli air raid on Iran’s South Pars field, Iran hit Gulf energy infrastructure in response, and the damage is now large enough that traders, governments, and energy companies are all having to think more seriously about supply routes, stockpiles, and how vulnerable they are. President Trump took steps to discourage further strikes on energy infrastructure and also got several allies to commit to contributing to secure freedom of navigation in the region.
But the market reaction still doesn’t match bearish commenters’ predictions of doom: oil and volatility were both down slightly late Thursday. That’s why I still think it makes sense to keep adding bullish exposure here. Our trades are aimed months out, not days out, and our base case remains that by the time these positions mature, we’ll be on the other side of this conflict. And the best source for those trade ideas remains our Top Names.
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 earlier this month:
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 9/18/2025.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from September 18th, 2025 returned -9.8%, versus -0.37% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 143 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 20.03% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.98%. 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.
