Our Core Strategy
Our core strategy is to buy equal dollar amounts of the Portfolio Armor web app’s top ten names, put trailing stops of 15%-20% on them, and replace them with names from the current week’s top ten when we get stopped out of a position.
Another Use For Our Top Names
We also use our top names in options trades, such as this one we exited this week:
Four-leg combo on Applied Digital (APLD 21.50%↑). Entered at a net debit of $0.97 on 8/18/2025; exited the put leg at a net debit of $0.20 on 8/26/2025; exited the call leg at $4 on 9/22/2025, for a net credit of $3.80. Profit: 292%1
On outlay; return on max risk (defined as APLD going to $0 before expiration) = 144%.
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 3/20/2025.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from March 20th returned +85.55%, versus 17.27% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 117 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 17.47% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.29%. 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.
Screen capture via Portfolio Armor on 9/25/2025.
If you’re starting our core strategy now, you’ll want to buy equal dollar amounts of each at or near these prices, if possible, on Friday, and then enter trailing stops of 15% to 20% on each of them. As you get stopped out of positions, you’ll add new ones from the then-current top ten names.