The Two Charts That Decide the Summer. Bonus: 16 quality names on my watchlist
Oil and the 10-year yield. If both stay calm, the bull runs wider. If they break, the inflation fear comes back.
Photo by Shaah Shahidh on Unsplash
🌍 Macro
Conditions remain favorable for stocks. The economy is strong, credit is loose, and inflation fears are fading.
But macro tension just resurfaced. On Saturday, Iran claimed the Strait of Hormuz is closed again — blaming Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Worth watching, but read the tape, not the headline: oil futures sits near one-year lows ($80) and the 10-year yield is calm at 4.45%.
The chain that matters: if Hormuz stays open, energy pressure keeps fading → inflation fears fade → rates stay low → the bull market can broaden.
One slow-moving reassurance: the Chicago Fed Credit Index sits below zero, meaning credit is still easier than average. No credit stress. No recession signal. This is the floor under the whole bull case.
[chart: Chicago Fed Financial Conditions Credit Subindex]
📊 Index
The S&P 500 closed at a fresh high — 7,500, up on the week. All moving averages aligned. Trend intact.
🔄 Sectors & Themes
This is a very concentrated market. The strength is real, but narrow — AI, robotics, semis, and the industrials/materials feeding the buildout.
Semiconductors lead everything: SMH +65% over three months, the strongest reading we track. Quantum and AI follow.
Offense is winning across the board. The risk appetite ratio (SPHB/SPLV) sits at 2.12, strongly bullish.
The clear loser: Energy. XLE is down 3% on the week and 11% over three months — the weakest sector on the board. The market is selling energy, not buying it as a hedge. That tells you what the market really thinks about Hormuz.
Also weak and rotating out: Bitcoin, solar, space, software. Money is moving within tech — from speculative names into quality growth.
💡 Summary — The Weeks Ahead
The backdrop favors stocks. Strong economy, loose credit, fading inflation. That hasn’t changed.
Two things to watch:
Oil and the 10-year yield. These are your real-time read on whether Hormuz is a genuine risk or just noise. If both stay calm, the bull case holds. If Brent breaks back above $90 and yields spike, the inflation worry returns.
Breadth. The market is too dependent on semis right now. The healthy next step is the other sectors catching up. If breadth recovers above 50 while the index holds, that’s the green light — the rally broadens and gets stronger. If the index keeps rising while breadth keeps falling, risk builds quietly.
Posture: Stay long. Stay selective. Don’t chase. This is a market to hold quality and let winners run — not to pile into extended names at new highs. Let oil and breadth confirm the next leg before pressing.
If Hormuz resolves and breadth broadens, this bull market has room to run wider and longer. That’s the setup worth waiting for.
📈 Portfolios
10X Momentum Portfolio
My GENI and ARQT buy-stop orders were filled. Below is a snapshot of all current open positions, their stop-loss levels, and the portfolio scorecard.
Historical ROI for this portfolio is +250%, or +48% annualized. I’m aware these are the results I expect this portfolio to return on average — not every year, and not in a straight line.
Worth remembering: this portfolio wins on a minority of trades (37% right now). The returns come from letting the winners run far past the losers. Expect a bumpy ride — that’s the system working as intended, not breaking.
I am not buying anythingh this week as I am fully invested with five open positions right now.
10X Easy Doubles Portfolio
Nothing to do this week. The portfolio is up 21.6% unrealized, sitting at $33,328 on $27,405 deployed. Eleven open positions, four slots still free.
The standouts are carrying the book: DELL +133%, LQDA +90%, ZVRA and HIMS both +35%. That’s the system working — a few big winners doing the heavy lifting while the laggards (ZETA −20%, ARDX −15%, NTNX −13%) stay small and contained.
Beating the S&P by 6.82% since inception. I’m letting the winners run and giving the rest time to develop.
A note on the numbers: the headline XIRR (450.9%) and “Avg Ann. Return” (1431.2%) are mathematically real but annualization artifacts — they extrapolate short holding periods (avg 41 days) out to a full year. DELL at +133% over a couple months annualizes to 5,751%, which is true arithmetic but not a number anyone should expect to repeat.
Not investment advice. Do your own research and consult a licensed advisor before acting.
🎁 Bonus — Paid Supporters Only
This is the part I reserve for the people who support my research.
Every week I screen for a specific kind of name: quality businesses growing fast, still reasonably valued, with technical strength confirming the fundamentals. Strong financials, expanding profitability, real upside — and a chart that says institutions are already moving in. Quality compounders caught early.
This week, 16 made the cut. Below, I break them into three tiers — and tell you exactly which ones fit the themes leading the market right now, where I’d look first, and which ones need the tape to cooperate.
🔒 The full breakdown — all 16 names, my tiering, and how I’m playing each one — is below for paid supporters.
