Top Names, 6/11/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
Looking Through The Smoke
The market had plenty to process this week: Iran, Hormuz, oil, CPI, the SpaceX IPO, and another sharp rotation inside the AI / momentum complex.
In our trade alert yesterday, we wrote about why we were rejecting the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty And Doubt) in the wake of the momentum correction since last Friday.
That still looks right.
The market is starting to separate fear from follow-through.
Iran’s Bark And Iran’s Bite
The Strait of Hormuz has been an issue for markets because oil, inflation, and risk appetite are all tied together.
But the most recent developments there have actually been slightly bullish.
The U.S. has been gradually prying the Strait back open to oil traffic, while applying military and nonmilitary pressure on Iran. Iran, meanwhile, has continued to issue threats, but its recent responses have been less effective than its rhetoric suggested.
Iran threatened a major response to the latest round of U.S. strikes yesterday, but from the reporting we saw, the response appeared to be underwhelming.
Today brought the latest installment of what simplistic cynics characterize as “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”)—in this case, because after bombing Iran yesterday, Trump said he’d canceled today’s strikes in light of an imminent deal.
If recent history is any guide, a peace deal may not actually be imminent. But the direction of travel is better than the headlines looked a few days ago: more oil traffic, more pressure on Iran, weaker Iranian retaliation, and a possible diplomatic offramp.
SpaceX And The Public-Market Space Trade
The other major story is SpaceX.
SpaceX is expected to begin trading Friday after pricing what is set to be the largest IPO in history. Whether the stock trades well immediately or not, the IPO forces public investors to put a value on the space economy in a much more direct way.
We’ve been writing about that for a while now, e.g., in this post last month,
The point was that space was moving from a niche theme to a public-market theme. The SpaceX IPO accelerates that process. It puts launch, satellite networks, defense, manufacturing, and space infrastructure in front of a much larger pool of public-market capital.
That kind of repricing can spread quickly. We saw that today in space-related names in which we have options positions: Velo3D (VELO 34.32%↑), Spire Global (SPIR 21.80%↑), Satellogic (SATL 24.54%↑), and Firefly Aerospace (FLY 19.95%↑).
From Energy Back Toward AI Infrastructure
There has also been a notable shift in our own rankings.
Portfolio Armor’s Top Names pivoted toward energy in early April; this week, the list has been pivoting back toward AI-adjacent and infrastructure names.
That continued tonight.
Acting When The Setup Is There
This week’s momentum correction gave us another chance to add long exposure selectively.
That’s been timely so far. Intel (INTC 0.00%↑) our #1 name and the subject of our Back Into Intel trade alert earlier this week, was up 9.27% today alone.
We remain bullish, but selective. And our system’s top names remain or top source of alpha.
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 week:
4-leg combo on Western Digital (WDC 8.64%↑). Entered at a net debit of $0.97 on 3/27/2026; exited the May 1st, 2026 $245/$240 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/14/2026 and exited the September 18th, 2026 $340/$350 call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/3/2026. Profit: 704% (return on max risk: 114%). 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 December 11th of last year.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from December 11th, 2025 returned +12.21%, versus +6.84% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 155 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 17.26% 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.
