Monthly Review — April & May 2026

Abstract

April and May were a study in contrast. April was deliberately quiet — the April 7 TACO ceasefire held, the war de-escalated, and I did almost nothing: a single carried-over RSP cleanup, a dividend reinvestment, and a EUR conversion for living expenses. I sat on a ~60% cash position and let the portfolio breathe. The reward for doing nothing was real: MSFT, my largest holding and largest unrealized loss at the end of March (−USD 576 on 4/9), recovered fully on its own through its April 29 earnings and finished May at +USD 577 — a ~USD 1,150 swing with zero adds, vindicating the March decision not to cut it. May was the opposite — the busiest process month I have had. The centerpiece was not a trade but a rewrite: on May 18 I replaced the entire allocation framework (Playbook v2.0), removing the Core-ETF sleeve, the fixed allocation bands, and the sector cap, and replacing them with a risk-vector world-view, an Interconnections methodology, and a single decision standard — risk-adjusted return vs near-riskless yield. Around it I simplified the book (clearing the war-era satellites on May 13, mostly at a profit) and then re-engaged hard: a staged PDD build (54 shares), a defense-sleeve thesis (RTX/GD), and my first two swing trades (WMT, FUTU). That re-engagement carried a mild but unmistakable late-cycle FOMO, which I caught in real time and spent the rest of the month building guardrails against. The defining meta-lesson of the period is that the most valuable output was not any position — it was the framework and the behavioral instrumentation around it.

Data window: April 10 to May 30, 2026. The window opens where the March review closed (the 4/9 post-ceasefire snapshot) and runs to the May 30 weekly snapshot.

TL;DR

• April was intentionally inactive. Effectively three transactions: RSP final cleanup (4/2, −USD 52.99, the tail of March’s Plan B), a KO dividend reinvest, and a EUR 11,000 conversion @ 1.1783 (4/20, living expenses / German residency). No new equity positions. ~60% cash held.
• MSFT recovery vindicated the March hold. From −USD 576 (4/9, USD 373.07) to +USD 577 (5/30, USD 449.97) — pure price, no adds. The decision not to cut before the 4/29 earnings was right, and this time the outcome agreed.
• 5/13 simplification, mostly at a profit. Cleared the leftover war-era satellites in one session: AMZN (10 sh, +USD 564 realized), VOO (4 sh, +USD 254), TLN (10 sh, −USD 34) — ~+USD 784 net realized, ~USD 8.8k of cash freed, just before the rewrite.
• The Playbook was rewritten (v2.0, 5/18). Removed: Core-ETF sleeve requirement, fixed allocation bands (Core 35–60 / Stocks 20–50 / Gold 8–15 / Cash 5–30), the 25% sector cap, the rigid 5-day step gap, and the absolute-loss “Sleep Test.” Added: risk-vector world-view, Interconnections methodology, decision-vs-near-riskless standard, dynamic conviction ladder, and a collaborative AI protocol. This is the real event of the period.
• Then concentrated. BRK.B was initiated as a stabilizer; PDD was built into a top position. The shape moved from “broad-ETF core + many satellites” toward “concentrated quality compounders + a large downstream cash position” — exactly the configuration v2.0 formalizes.
• PDD — the first major build under the new framework. 54 shares at ~USD 93.54 avg, staged across T1 (30 @ USD 96, 5/21), T1.5 (5 @ USD 93.50, 5/22) and a post-earnings T2 (5/27, after a 4/5 metric PASS). Thesis: ~5x ex-cash EV/EBIT, domestic dominance, policy tailwind, founder-investor conviction (段永平 at a multi-quarter high). Reframed mid-month as a “trapped-cash + operating growth + management-as-investor” bet, not a buyback compounder — RMB is not freely convertible and PDD runs zero buyback. HARD STOP to Q2.
• First swing trades (new strategy class). WMT mean-reversion (5/21, USD 117 limit, later cancelled as the setup degraded) and FUTU capitulation (5/22, missed the entry by seconds → +14.7% same-day opportunity cost). Both became lessons, not P&L.
• Behavioral instrumentation, the period’s richest output. A FOMO-penetration tracker (W1–W7), a daily Greed-Fear tracker, a 5/27 self-catch on a 14-day-repeated bear thesis, a 5/29 division-of-labor mandate (I keep the conviction; the AI keeps the cold R/D and the brake), and a 5/29 “wanting to reward innovation = alarm to tighten scrutiny” rule.
• Honest headline number: over the trailing year (to 5/15) the account’s mark-to-market was only +USD 719 against +USD 97,011 of deposits. NAV growth is deposits, not alpha. May ended at USD 100,922 (cash ~72%).

1) What happened (context + market environment)

1.1 April — the quiet convalescence

The March review closed on April 9, mid-ceasefire, with the explicit note that I did not trust the two-week truce. In the event, the TACO pattern held: the ceasefire did not fracture, oil normalized off its USD 112 spike, and by late April the war had de-escalated from “active risk” to “lasting background.” This is the third time in a year (June 2025, the April 2026 Iran ceasefire, and now its durability) that the burden of proof has fallen on the non-ceasefire scenario.

My April response was, by design, almost nothing:

• 4/2 — RSP final 9 shares sold @ USD 193.65 (−USD 52.99), the last leg of March’s Plan B rotation out of broad ETFs.
• 4/2 — KO dividend reinvested (0.2182 shares @ USD 76.58); housekeeping.
• 4/20 — EUR 11,000 converted @ 1.1783 (≈ −USD 12,961) for living expenses tied to German residency. This finally cleared the long-pending EUR need flagged in March, though at a rate well above the old 1.14 target.

That is the entire month of discretionary activity. I held ~60% cash and let the war-shocked book recover on its own. The single most important thing that happened in April was a thing I did not do: I did not cut MSFT before its April 29 earnings, and MSFT recovered (see §2.3).

1.2 May — clean up, rewrite, then re-engage

May ran in three movements.

1. Simplify (5/13). In one session I cleared the leftover war-era satellites — AMZN, VOO, and TLN (§3.2) — crystallizing two solid gains and one small loss, and freeing roughly USD 8.8k of cash. This both tidied the book and, in hindsight, set the stage for the rewrite.

2. Rewrite (5/18). I did a ground-up rewrite of the Playbook (v2.0; v2.1 added the operational tooling layer the same day). This was not a tweak — it retired the sleeve/band model that had governed January through March and replaced it with an explicit risk-vector world-view and a single decision standard. The trigger was the contradiction the March review had already named: bands that get violated in opposite directions in adjacent months are not constraining behavior, they are documenting it. Section 4 is devoted to this.

3. Re-engage (5/17 onward). I re-engaged at a much higher tempo than the prior two months: a staged PDD build, a defense-sleeve thesis (RTX/GD), my first two swing trades, and deep research on IBKR, BRK.B, and Chubb. The decision density on 5/21–5/22 was roughly 2–3x my recent baseline — and it came with a mild late-cycle FOMO that I caught contemporaneously and then spent the back half of the month instrumenting against (§5, §8).

The two weekly reviews bracket the story well: W21 (5/18–5/22) was a high-density, mildly-FOMO execution week; W22 (5/24–5/30) was its disciplined mirror — only one pre-committed trade executed, everything else patient limit bids below market.

1.3 Macro backdrop

Three timeline items framed the period:

• UAE leaves OPEC (5/1) — a 60-year member exits, weakening OPEC+ cohesion and adding to the structural (not merely cyclical) case that oil’s post-war floor sits above the pre-war baseline.
• Kevin Warsh sworn in as 17th Fed Chair (5/22) — a Fed regime change by the narrowest confirmation margin in history; rate-path uncertainty rises.
• “Managed competition” regime thesis (5/23) — I reframed US–China from “decoupling” to selective decoupling + de-dollarization + hub-and-spoke supply chains, with Taiwan peaceful-integration as the 55–65% base case. Net portfolio reading: gold and defense up, PDD-domestic up, a slow secular headwind for the payment networks to monitor at the next formal review.

These are context, not triggers — logged as background, not acted on directly.

1.4 My mental state

April was calm to the point of boredom, which was correct. May was the interesting one. The honest read, which I only fully calibrated after the fact, is that a late-cycle bullish itch crept in around May 21 — after an NVDA earnings deep-dive concluded “the AI bubble can run a while longer,” which cascaded into a “want to grab a piece” urge, a backlog-of-research impatience, and a sense of being infected by the market’s speculative mood. None of those are defensive reasoning; they are textbook late-cycle FOMO. I caught it mid-cascade rather than pre-cascade, which is honest progress but not mastery — by the time I flagged “something feels off,” the PDD T1 had already filled and a swing limit was already placed.

2) Performance & attribution

2.1 The honest headline: growth is deposits, not alpha

The trailing-year account statement (to 5/15) is a useful humbling anchor: over the full year the mark-to-market contribution was only +USD 719, against +USD 97,011 of net deposits. The account roughly doubled, and almost none of that was investing skill — it was savings. Time-weighted return for the trailing year was 10.65%, but that figure flatters a book whose dollar P&L was essentially flat ex-deposits.

I keep restating this because the monthly NAV line is the most misleading number I track. The discipline anchor is process and R/D math, not the headline balance.

2.2 NAV markers

The jump from ~USD 71k (4/9) to ~USD 99k (mid-May) is overwhelmingly deposits, not market gains.

2.3 Attribution

The period had one clear winner, one fresh drag, a steady anchor, and a clean set of realized exits:

• MSFT — the standout. −USD 576 unrealized on 4/9 (USD 373.07) → +USD 577 on 5/30 (USD 449.97), a swing of roughly USD 1,150, entirely from price (cost basis unchanged at USD 411.47 — no adds). This single recovery is the period’s biggest positive and the direct payoff of the March “do not cut before the 4/29 catalyst” decision.
• Realized gains on the 5/13 cleanup — AMZN +USD 564 and VOO +USD 254 (TLN ~flat, −USD 34). The satellites left as winners, not as cut losers.
• PDD — the biggest month-end drag at −USD 475 (54 shares, USD 93.54 avg, last USD 84.75). Freshly built and down post-earnings; the thesis is intact but the mark is red (§3.3).
• GLDM — the steady anchor again. +USD 250 unrealized; it has been a positive contributor in essentially every review this year and remains the cleanest macro hedge.
• IBKR (+USD 235) continues to drift up, but it is gift stock — exogenous, explicitly excluded from any framework scorekeeping.
• AXP (−USD 158) remains the long-standing paper loss; thesis intact, no action.

W22’s +1.56% week was mostly MSFT’s mark plus the mechanical NAV-neutral effect of deploying cash into PDD — not operating alpha.

3) Trades & actions

3.1 April — almost nothing, by design

Covered in §1.1: the RSP cleanup, a dividend reinvest, and a EUR conversion. No new equity positions, no thesis-driven deployment. After a five-week war this was the correct posture — but it is worth flagging that “do nothing” was easy in April precisely because the framework rewrite that would govern the next deployment had not happened yet. April was, in retrospect, the incubation period for the May 18 rewrite.

3.2 The 5/13 simplification (TLN / AMZN / VOO out, BRK.B in)

On May 13 I cleared the three leftover war-era satellites in a single session:

Net ≈ +USD 784 realized, ~USD 8.8k of cash freed. This was the cleanest structural move of the period: it crystallized two gains, retired the very last broad-ETF core holding (VOO), and concentrated the book ahead of the v2.0 rewrite. BRK.B was then initiated as a deliberate stabilizer (3 shares, USD 464.69 cost; present by the 5/22 snapshot). The honest gap: the trade record is clean, but I did not write a thesis note for the exits at the time — exits still deserve the same journaling discipline as entries (§5.5).

3.3 PDD — the first major build under the new framework

PDD was the first real thesis deployment after the rewrite, and it got the full treatment.

End-of-period: 54 shares, ~USD 93.54 avg, ~4.5% NAV, −USD 475 unrealized.

The thesis evolved meaningfully across the month:

• Entry case: ex-cash valuation is cheap (cash + short-term investments ≈ 52% of market cap; EV/EBIT ~5.4x on an operating line still growing +22%), domestic dominance is intact, a 2026 trade-in policy is a tailwind, and founder 段永平’s 13F position is at a multi-quarter high (~19.75M shares, +71% QoQ).
• Q1 earnings (5/27): revenue +11%, operating profit +22% (operating-leverage surprise) — but net income −15%, and online-marketing revenue ~flat (the deceleration Citi had warned about). The −15% net was correctly attributed to mark-to-market losses on PDD’s ¥660B FVTPL equity portfolio, not FX (a third-party “pure currency” read that I verified and corrected).
• The reframe (5/29): “not freely convertible” RMB plus zero buyback means the half-of-market-cap cash pile is a trapped, non-returnable backstop, not an Apple-style returnable cushion. The thesis survived a deliberate bear teardown — I reaffirmed it after hearing the short case, not before — but the D-side “cash = safety” was honestly downgraded a notch. Reframed as a “trapped-cash + operating growth + management-as-investor” asymmetric bet; R/D held at ~7–7.5x, nudged toward the conservative end.

Three gates are locked: a ~70% cash floor, a HARD STOP on adds until Q2 (~August), and an exit only if R/D compresses to 1.5–2.0x. Q2 online-marketing growth is the key falsifying gate.

3.4 Defense sleeve (RTX / GD)

A defense thesis was opened on 5/20 (RTX 70 / GD 30), anchored on the multi-decade OBBBA/NATO spending floor. It immediately became a behavioral case study: on 5/22, with both limits unfilled and prices above them, I deferred GD patiently but chased RTX from USD 173 to USD 176 — a move I flagged as FOMO in the moment and maintained anyway (graded C, the period’s only action-urge override). By 5/29 I had walked the RTX limit back to a patient USD 168 and left GD deferred. Net position at month-end: no defense shares held, only a resting USD 168 RTX bid. The dollar cost of the chase was trivial (~USD 30); the process cost — a PGR-style “chase a position you like” precedent — is the part worth remembering.

3.5 Swing trades — a new strategy class (WMT, FUTU)

May introduced a genuinely new strategy class: short-horizon, mechanical-stop swing trades, kept rigorously separate from long-term thesis positions.

• WMT (5/21) — a mean-reversion swing on a −7.83% oversold earnings gap; 30 shares @ USD 117 GTC with an attached stop and ladder exits. The setup degraded (consumer-confidence at multi-decade lows, soft guidance), the limit never filled, and it was cancelled on the 1-week time stop. Later re-studied as a long-term watchlist name (fairly valued ~USD 86–96 vs ~USD 116 market → not a buy).
• FUTU (5/22) — a capitulation-bounce swing into a −39.7% intraday collapse. The thesis (mechanism-overshoot) was right; the execution was wrong — my USD 75 limit was placed seconds too late and the stock rebounded +14.7% within minutes. The lesson: capitulation reversals complete in minutes, not the 1–3 days my mean-reversion framework assumed. FUTU was subsequently archived (the cross-border-broker space is too chaotic to hold).

Two swings, zero P&L, two useful lessons.

4) The framework rewrite (Playbook v2.0) — the real event of the period

4.1 What was removed

The May 18 rewrite deleted the entire structural apparatus that had governed January through March:

• the Core-ETF sleeve as a required component;
• the fixed allocation bands (Core 35–60% / Stocks 20–50% / Gold 8–15% / Cash 5–30%);
• the 25% hard sector cap;
• the rigid 5-trading-day step gap (kept only as a soft guideline);
• the absolute-loss “Sleep Test” framing (replaced by a relative-to-index ruler).

4.2 What replaced it

• §3 World-view — risk as vectors. Risk is not a single regime level; it decomposes into interest-rate, geopolitical, AI-bubble, regulatory/faction, and macro-fiscal vectors, each hitting sectors differently. There is no universal “should I be in stocks?” answer — every judgment lands sector-specifically.
• §3 Methodology — the Interconnections framework. First-order company financials are insufficient; second-order sector-ecosystem analysis separates driver from symptom.
• §3 Decision standard — vs near-riskless. For any position: derive risk-adjusted return, compare to T-bill-class yield; below it, skip; above it, size. Cash level is the downstream result of these decisions, not a policy target.
• §5 Dynamic conviction ladder (test-tier → build-up → reduce/exit) replacing static sleeves; §6 functional position roles; §4 collaborative AI protocol.

4.3 Why now: the band contradiction

The March review had already diagnosed the disease: in February I violated the bands by being stock-heavy (63% vs a 50% ceiling); in March I violated them in the opposite direction (60% cash vs a 30% ceiling). Rules broken in both directions within two months are descriptive, not prescriptive. v2.0 resolves this honestly — instead of pretending bands constrain behavior, it makes the actual decision criterion (R vs D vs near-riskless) explicit and lets cash float as the residual. The earlier v1.x lessons in the Lessons section are retained as historical record of the learning journey, not as currently-binding rules.

4.4 The new structural lens

Because the bands are gone, this is the last review that will present a sleeve-drift table. For the record, the end-of-period shape was roughly: equities ~28% of NAV, cash ~72%, with gold (GLDM) the only dedicated hedge sleeve and no broad-ETF core at all (VOO, the last of it, was sold on 5/13). Under v2.0 that ~72% cash is not a “violation” — it is the honest statement that, at current prices, few opportunities clear the EV test. Going forward the structural question changes from “did my sleeves drift?” to “did my R/D discipline hold, and is the cash level an earned residual or a hiding place?”

5) What went wrong

5.1 Late-cycle FOMO penetrated — and reached execution

The honest failure of the period. An NVDA earnings deep-dive on 5/21 concluded the AI bubble had runway, which cascaded into a “grab a piece” urge. By the time I flagged “something feels off,” PDD T1 had filled and a swing limit was placed — the self-awareness was in-cascade, not pre-cascade. The RTX chase (§3.4) was the clearest single symptom. This is the Druckenmiller-1999 pattern: the most dangerous moment is right after you convince yourself you understand the bubble well enough to play it.

5.2 The FUTU execution miss

Thesis right, execution wrong: +14.7% of same-day opportunity cost surrendered because I waited for stabilization on a setup whose reversal window was minutes, not days. A framework-calibration error rather than a thesis error, but a real cost.

5.3 PDD build pace

Even gated and EV-tested, 35 shares went on across two days (5/21–5/22) during exactly the week my FOMO was elevated. The post-earnings T2 was pre-committed and clean, but the early speed echoes the February SPGI lesson (price-staging without enough time-staging). The thesis is sound; the tempo deserves a flag.

5.4 The Greed-Fear tracker lapsed when it mattered most

I built a daily personal-sentiment tracker on 5/21 and then missed 8 consecutive days (5/23–5/29) — the single highest-research, highest-impulse week of the period. The irony is exact: a research-heavy week needs more personal-state monitoring, not less, because the impulse can migrate from “buy too much” to “over-scan research.” First fix-it item for June.

5.5 Exits went un-journaled

The 5/13 exits are clean in the trade record, but I wrote no thesis note explaining why I sold each — entries get full notes, these got none. Exits deserve equal discipline, if only to confirm later whether selling AMZN and VOO into strength was a considered call or just tidying.

6) What went right

6.1 The MSFT hold — decision quality and outcome quality, this time

March’s hardest lesson was that decision quality ≠ outcome quality. This period delivered the happier case: holding MSFT through the 4/29 catalyst on an intact thesis was the right decision, and for once the outcome agreed — a full recovery from −USD 576 to +USD 577 with no adds. The discipline of not chasing the 4/8–4/9 rebound, and not cutting the largest loss before its catalyst, both paid off.

6.2 The framework rewrite itself

Replacing a contradictory rule-set with an explicit, defensible one is the most valuable thing I did all year. It is uncomfortable to admit the bands never really worked, but naming it and fixing it is exactly what these reviews are for.

6.3 W22 — discipline under research pressure

The second half of May is the cleanest execution stretch on record: of a very high research volume, only one trade executed — the pre-committed PDD T2 — and everything else was patient limit bids resting below market. The W21 FOMO did not reach execution in W22. Zero action-urge overrides that week.

6.4 Real-time self-catches

Three stand out: the 5/27 bear-thesis catch (I was about to file a 90%-confidence 24-month SPX −50% prediction and realized I had filed nearly the same thesis 9 days earlier at 65% — a classic perma-bear confirmation-bias spiral, stopped before filing); the fabrication catches (an “8% soft cap” I had never actually set; a misclassification of existing holdings as “new names”); and the contemporaneous FOMO flag itself.

6.5 Institutionalizing the adversarial check

The 5/29 division-of-labor mandate is the period’s most durable process artifact: I keep emotion, conviction, and the final call; the AI keeps the cold R/D, premise verification, anti-fabrication, and an active brake on my impulses — explicitly advisory, not a veto, with overrides logged. It also formalizes that the AI has its own biases (yes-man drift, anchoring, fabrication) that I check in return.

7) Lessons learned

7.1 When rules break in both directions, replace them — don’t loosen them

The bands failed not because they were mis-calibrated but because they were the wrong kind of rule. The fix was a different decision criterion (R/D vs near-riskless), not wider bands. Loosening a broken rule preserves the illusion; replacing it is the honest move.

7.2 Doing nothing is a position, and April proved its value

A ~60% cash book held through a quiet April let MSFT recover untouched. Under v2.0 this is now explicit: cash is the residual of the EV test, and “no opportunity clears the bar” is a complete and respectable answer.

7.3 FOMO is most dangerous right after you “understand” the bubble

“The bubble can run, so let me grab a piece” is the exact late-cycle trap. The new tell to watch is the framing — “has runway,” “want to participate,” “research backlog impatience” — and the rule is to flag it the moment the framing appears, not when a visible symptom (a misread valuation, a chase) finally surfaces.

7.4 Match execution speed to the setup’s reversal window

Mean-reversion gaps give days; capitulation bounces give minutes. The pre-trade plan must state which regime it is and pre-place accordingly.

7.5 Repeating a thesis is not accumulating evidence for it

Filing the same bear call at escalating confidence (65% → 90% in 9 days) with no new mechanism is confirmation bias wearing a calibration costume. A high-cash posture is justified by R/D math at any conditional probability from 15% to 90% — so inflating the confidence number adds zero decision value and real self-deception cost.

7.6 “Wanting to reward innovation” is an alarm, not a license

The market pays for the gap between reality and price, not for admirable companies. The more dazzling the innovation, the more likely the price has already embedded it — so the urge to reward should trigger tighter scrutiny, not looser. (Live cautionary example: PGR, genuinely innovative, whose multiple still halved.)

7.7 Trapped cash ≠ a returnable safety cushion

PDD’s half-of-market-cap cash is real but non-returnable (inconvertible RMB, zero buyback). “Cheap on EV” and “cash gets discounted” are the same coin: the market is pricing the trapped-ness, not missing the cash.

7.8 The AI needs adversarial checking too

The “8% soft cap” fabrication and the holdings-misclassification both came from the assistant, not me. The division-of-labor mandate exists because cold analysis has its own failure modes — stitching fragments into a tidy narrative chief among them.

8) Rule updates (process changes after this period)

8.1 Playbook v2.0 / v2.1 (5/18) — the master change

The rewrite is the rule update: risk-vector world-view, Interconnections methodology, decision-vs-near-riskless standard, dynamic conviction ladder, functional position roles, and the collaborative AI protocol replace the entire sleeve/band model. See §4 and the Playbook.

8.2 FOMO-penetration tracker (W1–W7, new)

A 90-day behavioral instrument: seven watchpoints (decision-density spikes, “fire the next tranche early” urges, quote-checking frequency, margin-thinking, deferred-thesis restarts, new strategy classes, out-of-competence names). Single fires are noise; ≥4 cumulative — or any single margin-thinking fire — triggers a 14-day pause on new initiation. Aggregate review 2026-08-19.

8.3 Daily Greed-Fear tracker (new — and its first fix)

A 5-category personal sentiment reading vs CNN Fear & Greed, behavior-anchored. Rule added after the 8-day May lapse: a research-heavy week mandates the check rather than excusing it; if daily proves unrealistic, formally downgrade to weekly + mandatory ratings on decision days.

8.4 Division-of-labor mandate (5/29, new)

Standing operating principle: I hold conviction and the final call; the AI holds cold R/D, verification, anti-fabrication, and an advisory brake. Overrides are logged as behavioral events, not blocked. The check is mutual.

8.5 Thesis-based-exit principle (codified)

Long-term positions exit only on (a) fundamental breakage that is the company’s own problem or (b) thesis invalidation — never on external, third-party-transmission noise. The contrast case: BABA 2021–22 (the company’s own problems → exit) vs PDD 5/22 (a broker-regulation shock external to PDD → hold).

8.6 Non-English-source verification requirement (codified)

China/regulatory premises must include a Chinese-language source round before a conclusion is reached. The 5/22 cross-border-broker catalyst was un-verifiable in English-only search and only confirmed via 金十 / 新华社 sources.

8.7 No-fabrication discipline (reinforced)

Every quantitative claim is primary-sourced or flagged to-verify; no stitching fragments into a coherent narrative. Reinforced by the “8% soft cap” and holdings-misclassification catches.

9) Forward look — June and beyond

9.1 Open positions and resting bids

At 5/30 the book is concentrated quality + ~72% cash, with a disciplined set of below-market GTC bids: BRK.B @ USD 430 (a deep-value add awaiting an event-driven selloff), IBKR @ USD 62 (≈4x R/D), RTX @ USD 168 (the de-chased defense entry), GLDM @ USD 80, PDD @ USD 80, plus a GLDM @ USD 100 profit-trim and an MCD @ USD 275 starter. None are near market — the posture is “buy only at attractive R/D, and be willing to wait.”

9.2 Key dates and gates

9.3 What I will and won’t do

• Will: hold the PDD gates (70% cash floor, HARD STOP to Q2, R/D 1.5–2.0x exit); keep limit bids anchored to each name’s current R/D and refresh them as theses evolve (no stale bids); fix the Greed-Fear cadence; let the framework — not the news — drive action.
• Won’t: add to PDD before Q2 regardless of price; chase any name (the RTX lesson); re-present a sleeve-drift table (v2.0 retired it); inflate a bear-thesis confidence number that changes no decision; treat ~72% cash as a problem to “cure” rather than an earned residual.

10) End-of-period portfolio snapshot (5/30)

Total NAV: USD 100,922 Equity market value: ~USD 27,944 (~27.7% of NAV) Cash: ~72.2% (downstream of the EV test, per v2.0 — not a target) Leverage: 0.28 (cash account) Total unrealized P&L: ≈ +USD 633

Holdings

Open GTC orders (5/30): SELL 10 GLDM @ USD 100 (profit trim) · BUY 30 BRK.B @ USD 430 · BUY 5 MCD @ USD 275 · BUY 10 RTX @ USD 168 · BUY 10 GLDM @ USD 80 · BUY 10 PDD @ USD 80 · BUY 20 IBKR @ USD 62. All below market — the price discipline is the point.

Signed off 2026-05-31. The portfolio barely moved; the framework moved a great deal. April taught me the value of doing nothing; May taught me to rebuild the rules and then watch myself like a hawk while I used them.