Top Names, 6/18/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
The Market Gets A Geopolitical Tailwind
Last week, markets were still looking through the smoke.
This week, some of that smoke cleared.
The biggest market story was the signed memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran.
Iran / Hormuz risk had been one of the cleanest paths to a nastier inflation shock: higher oil, higher gasoline, higher shipping risk, higher bond yields, lower risk appetite.
Instead, the market got the opposite impulse.
Oil sold off. The Strait of Hormuz risk premium came in. The geopolitical tail risk that had been hanging over energy and inflation expectations eased.
The New Fed Chair Starts Hawkish
The other big macro story was the first Fed meeting under Kevin Warsh.
The Fed held rates steady, but the message was not dovish. Warsh signaled a renewed focus on price stability, and the market initially treated that as a hawkish turn.
That reaction made sense.
A Fed that sounds more willing to tighten is usually not what growth stocks want to hear. Short-term yields pushed higher, and the first reaction in equities was negative.
But that reaction didn’t last.
The Iran MOU mattered more because it directly attacked one of the market’s biggest inflation concerns. A hawkish Fed is still a headwind. But falling oil and lower geopolitical risk gave investors a reason to look past it.
From Oil Shock To Relief Trade
That’s the shift.
A week ago, the market had to price the possibility of a broader energy shock. This week, it had to price the possibility that the shock was receding.
That changes the tape.
Energy disruption risk comes down. Inflation pressure eases at the margin. The Fed still matters, but it isn’t the only story. And when oil stops threatening to break higher, growth and infrastructure themes can start working again.
That’s what we saw in our own rankings this week.
The current Top Ten isn’t a list of generic defensives. It’s a list heavy on infrastructure, bottlenecks, and strategic capacity: AI-linked networking and optics, energy and fuel exposure, space, industrial capacity, and offshore infrastructure.
That’s a useful read on the market.
Investors are still paying for scarcity. They’re still paying for capacity. And they’re still paying for names tied to the physical buildout behind AI, defense, energy security, and reindustrialization.
Monster Performance From Our Top Names
As you’ll see below, the latest Top Names cohort to finish its 6-month run is a reminder of why we keep coming back to our system.
The 12/18/2025 Top Ten cohort averaged 144.82% over the next six months, versus 10.5% for SPY.
That’s an extraordinary result, helped by at least one huge winner, but it’s also the point of the system: finding names with the potential to overwhelm the index when the right theme catches fire.
Bullish, But Still Selective
We remain bullish, but selective.
This week’s market news improved the backdrop: geopolitical risk came down, oil eased, and risk appetite recovered despite a hawkish first message from the new Fed chair.
We continue to let our system surface the strongest names, then use our RSI and Setup rating filters to avoid the most overextended setups.
The market is giving us opportunities again.
Our job is to take them where the setup is there.
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 this week:
4-leg combo on Lam Research (LRCX 0.00%↑). Entered at a net debit of $0.84 on 4/2/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/13/2026 and exited the call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/15/2026. Profit: 829% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 119%). Signal: 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 18th of last year.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from December 18th, 2025 returned (an astonishing) +144.82%, versus +6.84% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 156 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 18.08% 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.
