Top Names, 5/7/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
Brief Market Comment
The market spent the week trying to price two conflicting possibilities at once: a real de-escalation in the Persian Gulf, and the risk that the Strait of Hormuz remains a live flashpoint.
Project Freedom And The Strait
Early in the week, markets took some comfort from Project Freedom, the U.S. effort to guide commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Then President Trump paused the operation, saying the U.S. wanted to give a pending provisional deal with Iran time to be finalized. That was the official explanation. The reported backstory was less reassuring: Gulf allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, had balked at giving the U.S. the base access and airspace it needed, apparently out of concern that the mission’s rules of engagement were too vague and could invite Iranian retaliation without a decisive enough U.S. response to end the threat.
By Thursday, Project Freedom appeared to be back on track, after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reportedly lifted those restrictions. But the return of the operation immediately underscored the risk: three U.S. destroyers transiting the Strait came under Iranian missile, drone, and small-boat attack. The attacks didn’t hit U.S. assets, and the U.S. responded with strikes on Iranian launch sites and other military targets. For now, U.S. officials are still treating the exchange as self-defense rather than the end of the ceasefire.
That leaves markets in an awkward spot. Oil has backed off its panic highs, but the Strait is still not a settled issue. A provisional deal with Iran may still be possible, but the path from “possible deal” to “normal shipping” is not a straight line. And as long as the Gulf remains unstable, energy, defense, industrial capacity, and supply-chain resilience stay central to the market story.
AI, Earnings, And Defined-Risk Trades
The other side of the ledger remains AI and earnings. Strong results from key semiconductor and data-center names kept the AI infrastructure trade alive this week, even as the macro tape stayed messy. That fits the broader pattern we’ve been seeing in our own exits: the best trades haven’t required us to guess every headline correctly. They’ve come from using defined-risk structures on names with strong upside potential, then harvesting premium or taking gains when the options market gives us the chance.
That remains the approach here. Tonight’s list still has plenty of exposure to the real-world economy: energy, industrial capacity, defense-adjacent spending, materials, and infrastructure. That mix makes sense in a market where AI is still driving the tape, but the Persian Gulf, oil prices, supply chains, and reindustrialization remain part of the same story.
Subscription Prices Are Going Up
Subscription prices for the Portfolio Armor Substack are going up from $40 per month/$400 per year to $50 per month/$500 per year next Thursday, but current subscribers will be grandfathered into the price they’re currently paying. So consider joining now, if you’re a free subscriber. If you join and change your mind, I’ll be happy to give you a prorated refund at any time.
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 Micron Technology (MU 0.00%↑). 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.
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 November 6th, 2025.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from November 6th, 2025 returned -7.47%, versus +9.44% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 150 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 16.84% 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.
