Top Names, 4/23/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
A Brief Market Comment
The market spent most of this week trying to reconcile two competing stories. On the one hand, investors have been willing to keep bidding stocks higher on the view that the worst of the Iran shock may already be behind us: the S&P 500 came into Thursday up about 11% from its March low, and both the S&P and Nasdaq had just notched record closing highs. On the other hand, Thursday’s pullback was a reminder that this rally is still sitting on a geopolitical fault line. The S&P fell 0.41% and the Nasdaq 0.89% on Thursday as oil resumed climbing and hopes for a quick Iran deal faded.
The latest news out of the Gulf helps explain why. The ceasefire has been extended, but the blockade of Iranian ports remains in place, talks are stalled, and Iran is still showing it can disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, Tehran broadcast video of commandos seizing cargo ships in the strait, underscoring that even with the shooting paused, the market is not back to normal. Before the war, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and LNG moved through Hormuz, so traders are right to assume that any prolonged disruption there can keep feeding into energy prices and risk appetite.
That is now starting to show up in the macro data too. April’s flash PMI showed U.S. business activity picking up, but it also showed supplier delivery times worsening and output prices rising at the fastest pace since July 2022 as the Iran conflict disrupted supply chains. In other words, the market is still getting enough growth and earnings strength to support risk assets, but it is also getting a fresh inflation problem at exactly the wrong time. Our system’s Top Names seem to have anticipated some of this macro data, positioning us in North American energy, fertilizer, and other companies likely to benefit from exactly these kinds of supply shocks, price pressures, and shifting trade flows.
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 week:
4-leg combo on ASML Holding (ASML 0.00%↑). Entered at a net debit of $2.45 on 3/19/2026. Exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/14/2026, and exited the call spread at $8.00 on 4/20/2026. Profit: 218% (return on max risk: 72%). 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 October 23rd, 2025.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from October 23rd, 2025 returned -5.3%, versus +5.47% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 148 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 17.13% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.71%. 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.
