The Saturday Sendout

The Simple Side

The Saturday Sendout is tradeable market news in one place. Get weekly financial information on insider, company executive, and politician trading plus tons of other insights. thesimpleside.substack.com

  1. Jun 7

    Weekly Performance Update & Current Selloff Views

    All right, everybody, welcome back to another weekend newsletter from The Simple Side. We’re gonna jump into our portfolio performance, all of our one-off stock bets, and we’ll talk a little bit about why the market dropped so much and if we should be worried. Let’s get into it… But before we do… Here is a quick breakdown of all the current offerings that Simple Side subscribers can indulge in. We offer a total of 2 alternatively managed portfolios, 3 managed portfolios, and a group of one-off stock picks. All of my personal investment capital is invested in all of these things I discuss, unless otherwise stated. Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) * The Perplexity AI Finance Portfolio * Portfolio managed entirely by Perplexity Finance, offered by The Simple Side on Autopilot. * The Insideredges.com Portfolio * Portfolio built by Insider Edges Premium Picks and Monthly Picks * 13-19 holdings * 10 from the premium picks portfolio and 3-9 from the monthly picks. Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) * The Flagship Fund * Long-term holds (12-month rebalance) * Focused on quality growing companies * 15-25 holdings * The Tech Growth Portfolio * Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months) * Focused on disrupting high-growth names * Includes monthly picks * 15-20 holdings * The Second-Hand Effects Portfolio * Mid-to-long-term holds (3-24-months) * Focused on current trends, “picks and shovels.” * 15-20 holdings Other Offerings (Only Available Through This Newsletter) * One-off Researched Stock Bets * Individual stocks we invest in whenever we find good opportunities. Let’s quickly talk about our managed portfolios that we talk about and share with subscribers for free in the newsletter. The two portfolios that I’m gonna talk about here are available to copy trade on Autopilot. And like always, there’ll be links in the newsletter all over the place for you to go and find these portfolios on Autopilot to copy trade them. One of these portfolios is managed by Perplexity Finance. The other one is insideredges.com, which is an insider trading, thirteen-F tracking, hedge fund tracking platform that’s available, and you guys can go and look at that and find that and use them and their stock picks if you so choose. Our quick discussion on the current market and if we should be worried is at the very bottom today… Alternative Managed Portfolios (offered on Autopilot) Perplexity Finance Let’s start with the Perplexity Finance portfolio that we’re managing. Currently, the portfolio has something like eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars of assets under management, and that’s spread across about a hundred different people. Year to date, the portfolio has been doing extremely well, up 28.78% percent, while the S&P five hundred over the same period of time has only averaged 7.96 percent returns. So pretty impressive returns there. And again, over the past three months, we’re up something like twenty percent, again, outperformance against the S&P five hundred. Over the past month, we’re up four point four eight percent, again, outperforming the S&P five hundred, which is only up one point nine percent. And then over the past week is where things started to get a little bit ugly. We’re down three percent, 3.06 percent to be exact, and the S&P five hundred over that same period of time is down two point five percent. So a little bit of underperformance, in the short term, but when you zoom out, when you look at the big picture, we’re outperforming by quite a vast margin there. And, we’re very happy to be sitting in that position with this portfolio. Now, if we want to talk stocks and the allocations that we’re seeing in this portfolio, it’s pretty cut and dry, pretty simple. Micron is the number one pick in the portfolio with a weighting of 7.36%. We’re up almost 280% on that stock. Google is sitting at the number two allocation, which is 7.28%… so, about 0.1% less than our Micron position. That’s up about 15%. And then in the number three position, this has been a relatively new one from Perplexity Finance over the past few weeks. It’s been growing in the position in XLU. That XLU stock is in the utility sector, and so it’s tracking the utility sector there. That’s a 7.21% weighting, and that’s down about 1.4%. So, I think if you look at the broader market downturn that we just recently saw, the large sell-off that we saw on Friday, especially, the XLU purchase starts to kind of make a little bit of sense. It’s looking for a little bit of stability while a lot of the other things in the market are on rocky ground. The next couple of stocks we have on the list are Amazon, Microsoft, UnitedHealth, Lam Research, and then we have a Schwab US dividend ETF. So those really make up about your top 10 picks there. Overall, as I said, performance has been very good. It’s well-to-do. New stock picks come out for Perplexity Finance every Monday morning. So if the AI decides with the information that I feed to it that it wants to make some sort of a change, it’ll let me know then. I’ll go in, I’ll make the change, I’ll make the adjustment, Then the portfolio will continue on. Again, the goal I think for this portfolio is just to have extended slow growth, looking for anywhere upwards of 8% to 10% returns per year. So a slight outperformance of the S&P 500 is what we’re going for. Recently, we’ve seen a large outperformance against the S&P 500. Hopefully, that continues, but only time will tell. InsiderEdges.com (Portfolio & Website) The next managed portfolio that we have is the InsiderEdges.com portfolio. This is a newer one that I just started tracking on Autopilot, and that means that we don’t have as many subscribers or as many assets under management under this portfolio yet. But I think over time, and from what I’m gleaning from the InsiderEdges.com website, we should start to see this portfolio pick up and outperform over time, especially in bull markets. So we just started this portfolio, I want to say about three-ish months ago. So over the past three months, we’re up around 11.75%. Autopilot shows the returns a bit lower because it takes the aggregate return, not the actual return you would have experienced over that time period. Again, the S&P 500 was up over that same period of time, 8.25%. So outperformance there. Over the past month, we have been struggling down 2.55%, while the S&P 500 returns 1.9%. So we’re down a little bit under the S&P 500 over that same period of time. But over the past three months, again, zooming out at the bigger picture, we’re seeing some outperformance from the portfolio there. And then this past week, the portfolio just got smoked really hard, down 5.61%, while the S&P 500, as I said earlier, was down only 2.5%. So underperformance again over the past week should be no surprise, heavily indexed in tech, as many hedge funds and 13F investors are. So, of course, we’re going to see some negative performance, especially when we watch the Nasdaq take such a sharp fall. So the way InsiderEdges.com portfolio works is we take all of their premium portfolio stock picks that are available to subscribers who use the website, and we put them into a portfolio, and we offer that portfolio for people to copy trade. Now, if you look back at the historical, I guess, rankings of the portfolio, we’ve seen the premium picks portfolio perform at about 17% per year, and we’ve seen the monthly picks portfolio perform at about 22% a year. So if you want to go and check any of that out, again, just go to InsiderEdges.com. But we’ll talk about what their top positions are at the current moment. They currently have 14 positions. I think 4 of those are coming from the monthly picks portfolio. The other 10 are coming from the premium picks portfolio, and they’re allocated as follows. Microsoft is in the largest position by a pretty wide margin outside of the top three holdings. Allocation percentage is 16.17%. Current return since that stock’s been invested in is 4.2%. Amazon is in the number two position. Allocation is 15.19%. The current percent return on that holding is 2.4%. Then, at number three, the one that is lagging relative to these top, large holdings is Meta. Allocation is only 10%, so 5% less than the other two, and we’re down about 2.1% on that holding. Then I think the next couple of picks are where we start to get into more of the premium picks territory. Cloudflare, ticker NET, allocation 6.56%. We’re up 23.6% on that holding. Nat Terra, this is a pick from, I believe, Stanley Druckenmiller. Allocation is about 6.11%. We’re up around 10% on that pick. Of course, I’ll include a picture here so you guys can go and check out the rest of the stocks we hold and how they’ve been performing. In general, I think this portfolio is set to do well over time, especially in periods after we see stock market drops like what we’ve seen today. Of course, I wish we were going to get a bunch of 13F filings tomorrow so that I could go jump over to InsiderEdges, find all the important stock picks, invest in those companies, and then take that, run with it. Obviously, we don’t have those new filings coming out now, but we’ll be watching for those along with InsiderEdges at some point in the future. But for our managed portfolios that are kind of external to what we offer to paid subscribers on the newsletter, that’s all we have. We’re going to jump into the performance of some of these other actively managed portfolios that are under my care here in just a moment. But I wanted to share two portfolios that have actually been performing very, very well that you just can’t access really through the newsletter. You kind of need to be on Autopilot to be able to copy trade those portfolios. Of course, they’re included in the newsletter. You’re going to be getting these every week now.

    38 min

  2. May 9

    S&P 500 Trends & Interesting Stocks

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Thanks to hear.com for sponsoring this article! What a year this has been, and what an insane past few weeks… The market has been in an oil CRAZE, and it seems that despite the worry of the oil markets, despite the overvaluation of the markets, despite the insane debt levels of the US government, despite it all… the money printer that is the United States stock market has pushed forth to higher and higher levels. Year-to-date, the stock market has risen nearly 8% — a figure I honestly thought was near impossible. Since 1993, the SPY has averaged an 8.65% CAGR, with relatively few major drawbacks. The following graph represents the market’s CAGR as it changes throughout the years from 1993 to 2026. Make a note that nearly anytime we see a dip in the graph, the market is offering an incredible buying opportunity. It should come as no surprise that in recent years, CAGR has made massive jumps. Since 2023, the market CAGR has been 17.85%, and assuming positive returns through the end of 2026, we will be looking at the fourth consecutive year of gains. Since 1993, the market has seen more than 3 years of straight gains for more then 4 months in a row only 3 times. Once from 1995 - 1999 (5 years), another time from 2003 - 2007 (5 years), and now from 2023 - 2026 (4 years). I am sure I don’t need to remind you what happened in the years following those great market runs ending in 2000 and 2008. One thing I do think is important to mention, however, is the returns that we have been experiencing these past few years relative to the most similar bubble. Before the Dot Com bubble that occurred in 2000, the average returns were 26%, while the current average returns are 18%. Now, I am not saying that before any kind of market downturn, we need to average 26% returns, but I did just want to show that the market still does have room to run relative to what we have seen historically. One of the largest differences we have now, relative to the 2000’s crash, is real earnings growth. Companies are truly seeing earnings growth, and we know that earnings growth typically translates into growth in the S&P 500. We can also look at the two (earnings growth and SPY growth) on the same chart, and get a similar depiction. Again, here you can see that things track quite similarly along with one another. When there is an increase in earnings, the SPY tends to see an increase in the price of shares. I wanted to share all of this information for two reasons. * The market doesn’t go up and to the right for infinity. There has to be a reason for the market’s value to increase. * We are approaching levels of growth that have historically pointed to following declines. This week, I just wanted to look at some quick, super generalized trends we are seeing just with the S&P 500 relative to recent events and how substantially different they are from normal. I also wanted to note the fact that even though we are extremely far away from normal, we are also very far away from the insanity that we had in the 2000s. I know that the mainstream media makes it feel so deeply that the world is falling apart, but the reality is that we are still okay. Yes, the world is crazy, and the market is volatile, but overall, the market’s momentum is positive, and earnings keep proving the growth in the S&P isn’t nonsensical. Now I want to get into my portfolios and some potential research bets later this week. For now, I want to get into and share the current stocks we are invested in. We have had relatively solid performance on these picks to date (as is seen on our website https://thesimpleside.news/research for paid subscribers). I just wanted to share all of the current bets as well that exist outside of the portfolios.

    17 min

  3. May 2

    Special Situation Stock Investing | Two Picks

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Thanks to VantagePoint for sponsoring this article! This is going to be one for the paying subscribers. Today, I am going to skip talking about the news, and instead, we are going to take a look at two investments I have made. We also have new stock picks for our monthly investments, and coming this week, we will be discussing some of the new stock picks from InsiderEdges.com. There is a ton of value in today’s newsletter. I will try to send out some synopses on all of these investments over the next few weeks. It will help to have some more concentrated looks at each of these investments. One of the companies is a stock we already own, and I am going to be revisiting the valuation thesis (this is Stock 2). For stock two, I am expecting an initial jump in stock price to occur within the next 60-90 days, assuming no major changes in the thesis. The full stock returns will be realized over multiple quarters and will come after cash flows remain steady. The payoff timeline for stock 1 is not as exact as the other investment. We know that the deal we are investing in is expected to close in the latter half of 2026. So, I suppose this will be a 90 to 120-day payoff timeline. Here is a quick synopsis of the investments: Stock 1Returns: 33%Timeline: 90-120 days Stock 2Returns: 308%Timeline: >1 year** *Caveat that this investment should see an initial bump within the next 60-90 days based on my analysis (nothing is guaranteed). For those of you wondering what you are missing, I want to offer up an example. When the Strait of Hormuz started topping headlines all across the globe a few months ago, we decided that we needed to buy some portfolio insurance. We were sitting at nearly a 50% cash position, looking for potential investments to help offset losses we thought were coming, thanks to idle oil tankers. One of those stocks we decided to go long in was CVE (Cenovus Energy). We posted about the company on March 9, and cited two main reasons for the purchase. * Rising oil prices meant higher revenues and, therefore, higher stock prices. * A hedge against our current portfolios, which are heavily invested in higher-risk, AI-adjacent equities. Oil averaged a price of $69 a barrel in 2025, and at that value, CVE generated $38,239M in revenue. At the end of 2025, CVE was worth about $17.53 a share, and with 1,883M shares outstanding. We calculated the market cap at that time to be about $33,008M. Let’s call this a 1:1 valuation (even though the actual ratio is about .86). So, we can value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues. Now, let’s assume that all of their revenue was being generated by oil. That means they made $38,239M in revenue, divided by $69 per barrel, equals about 554M barrels of oil. Those same 554M barrels of oil, valued at $100 per barrel, would bring revenue up to $55,400M. Now, if we value CVE at 1:1 with its revenues, that means the market cap would be $55,400. Divided by the same number of shares outstanding: 1,883M, we end up with a per share value of $29.42. This is a projected 62% return for CVE in just 1 year. That model also assumes no growth and includes none of the “speculation money” that would flow into the stock over that timeline, either. Regardless, we adjusted this return for the potential for speculative capital, solved for the company already being undervalued, and ended up with a final potential annual return of 80%. We then figured that if oil was to stay at a value of $100 for just a quarter, we could see returns of 20% in just that time frame, and we made our bet on CVE at a value of 23.54. Just 21 short days later, we closed out the trade with a 20% profit on March 30 at a value of $27.44. *Please note that in this analysis, I made a ton of assumptions that are not necessarily true, but I wanted to show the general methodology that led me to make this stock pick. Without any further ado, let’s talk about our new investments!

    12 min

  4. Mar 29

    Black Gold Runs The World (and the stock market)

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Enjoy this article thanks to Constant Contact! Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here Insider Trading & Hedge Fund Reporting: Found at InsiderEdges.com Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. If you want to get a quick overview of the current happenings in the oil market, I would go read last week’s newsletter (or listen to it). I would also strongly recommend that you go listen to anything from Doomberg. He is one of the top energy market analysts and is the person (group) that I turn to when the energy markets are having their moment. Doomberg was one of the first people to get me into my SMR investments. The most recent podcast I have seen from him is this one. Between those two articles, you should be able to catch up on the world of oil and the current state of the oil economy. If you have been following my recent oil bets over the past few weeks, then you know that we have made 3 main bets and they have returned 12%, 13%, and 10% just in the past week. You can find all of those picks I made in last week's newsletter, and I will include them in this week’s with some updates on performance. Let me quickly give my opinions on the upcoming market movements and the current state of the market. My opinions from last week remain. In 18 months, oil will be lower than it is today. If you wanted hard numbers, I would say that oil will be down below $90, and likely below $80 a barrel. With that being said, I think we are absolutely on the verge of an energy crisis; however, I do not think that the US is going to be affected as adversely as people think. Here is a quick quote on energy consumption in the US: The United States consumes approximately 20–20.5 million barrels of petroleum products per day as of 2023-2024, representing about 20% of global consumption.- https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6 Here is a quick quote on the energy production in the US: U.S. crude oil production is at record levels, averaging approximately 13.4 to 13.6 million barrels per day (b/d) as of early 2026. The U.S. is the world's top producer, with total petroleum production (including natural gas liquids) exceeding 21 million b/d.- https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press577.php So, the key thing to note here is that we are seeing production and consumption in the US that are nearly equal. We do not have to export what we have; we are self-sufficient in the oil markets, and if we need to, we can turn off the export machine and keep our oil internal. This means that we will not see oil restrictions at the pump, but the prices could remain elevated for longer. One of the trades that I would love to scream about from the rooftops right now is buying natural gas. Oil and natural gas have a long-term correlation, and with natural gas so low right now, the argument could be made that going long natural gas would be beneficial. The one issue I have with that trade is the fact that when we drill for oil, we typically end up with natural gas as well. Modern techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling can extract both from the same well, and operators are likely to focus on the higher-priced petroleum products in the short term. This actually puts negative pressure on the price of natural gas in the short term, bringing prices even lower. The natural gas trade is coming, but has yet to arrive fully in my eyes. If we see natural gas futures get pushed down below $2 (or even lower), then we could have some extremely large upside opportunities over the long run. For now, the best trades to make are long oil (like we have done) and neutral on nat gas. The rest of the market will continue to decline until we see the newest American war start to shut down. Again, we are about 50% invested in our portfolios, and 25% invested in these oil bets on the side, and we can take this additional 25% in cash and push further into these one-off oil bets if we see further upside (helping to offset the portfolio losses further). Quick Comments I am still 50% invested in my portfolios. These are the same ones you can copy trade on Autopilot (The Flagship, AI Second-Hand, and Tech Growth) portoflios. About 25% of my portfolio is uninvested and is returning 3.25-3.75% returns in HYSAs, treasuries, and other “cash equivalent” positions. The final 25% is currently invested across 3 main oil names and 1 additional crypto bet (with small allocations to others). Please note that these are available to paying subscribers. I will be sure to discuss these directly below for pro members. This year, the portfolios are struggling (no surprise here, as the whole market is); however, the other 50% is what is keeping our returns stabilized. My current investments are down about 10% YTD for all of the portfolios. In comparison to the -7% we are seeing in the SPY, I am not upset in the slightest about these returns. I still think we own some of the top-quality companies available to investors in the US! The 25% cash position is up something like 0.8%. The 25% we own in one-off bets is up about 10% on average. Portoflios (50%): -10% Cash (25%): +.8% One-off (25%): 10% Overall portoflio (100%): -2.5% YTD Overall, having a loss of 2.5% while the market struggles and sits at losses over 7%, I can’t be too sad. I think there are a lot of investors who are struggling much worse than I am right now. As an important note, I think we have some extreme upside in those one-off bets we have made, and we will see the portfolio turn green in the coming weeks as oil prices remain at their higher-than-normal levels. Between all of our oil bets, I can see a +30% upside possible (on average). **Final note: these are my personal opinions and investments and are in no way, shape, or form am I acting as a financial advisor for you or your portfolios. If you want to take a 100% position in the oil bets, if you want to take a 50% position or a 1% position, it does not matter to me. You do not, nor should you, copy my exact portfolios or positions. The “monthly picks” that I made have been faring the storm relatively well. They are down only .34% this month. We will be closing these trades on Tuesday, and we will then be opening April’s trades the following day (April 1st). We currently have 2 monthly stock picks in the works for next month. With all of that being said, I would love to hear from you all how you would like to see all of these different research articles and stock portfolios presented. I have thought about building a sort of heatmap for all of these, but I don’t know what would be best for you all. I like the website, but I think we can do better… As a further note, this is everything we offer to subscribers: * Portfolios * Flagship fund * AI Second Hand Effects * Tech Growth * Other * One-off Research * Macro Allocations * Monthly Stock Picks * Weekly Stock Picks * Hedge Fund Portfolio * Coming Soon in partnership with InsiderEdges Quick Updates (Current Bets)

    17 min

  5. Mar 22

    Oil, Oil, Oil | Everyone Freak Out The World Is Ending (kidding, we are fine)

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Enjoy this article thanks to Groundfloor! (if you are looking for a solid place to keep your “cash” this is it — again sponsored but I love what they do). We have a few questions this week about our investments that I wanted to answer: Question about stop losses on weekly picks: Manual stop losses, we wait and see if things cross below 1% and then we kind of watch for a few mins. If the stock just immediately plumets then it is a sell right away, if not we hold for about 10 mins and then sell. Question on our portfolios: You can find all of the stock we invest in here: https://thesimpleside.news/ — we have a portfolios page, a research page, and a weekly picks page as well. All of these have available data for you! Reach out to me directly at thesimplesidenews@gmail.com if you have further questions or use that button below. Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. Current Economic Views Oil, oil, oil. Really, that is the main and only thing driving the markets right now. If you are not up to speed on the oil happenings right now, I want to quickly update you. If you are up to speed, but you want a quick synopsis, this would be a great place to start. The current big issue is the Strait of Hormuz, which has been in a strict lockdown since the issues with Iran started. Currently, the strait has been deemed the “world’s most expensive parking lot” since nearly all ships (on either side) are held up and unable to pass through. The picture below is taken from marinetraffic.com and shows all of the ships stopped on either side of the strait. The average amount of oil that flows through the strait daily is about 20 million barrels of oil (and other crude products). This represents about 20% of the global consumption and nearly 25% of all seaborne oil (as reported by the BBC). The “war” has been going on for about 22 days now, which means about 440 million barrels of oil have been unable to move over that duration. In general, this seems like a drop in the bucket when you know that the total oil use annually is over 37 billion barrels; however, if you annualize the average daily amount of oil that passes through the strait, you end up with over 7.3 billion barrels cut from the world’s supply (this is about 20% as we noted earlier). This matters a ton for a few reasons, but the main one is the inelastic demand that the world has for oil — in other words, regardless of the price of oil, the demand remains relatively the same. This means, regardless of whether oil is $2.50 at the pump or $4.50 at the pump, the amount that people drive tends to remain about the same. This means that oil suppliers end up making tons more profits because they sell about the same amount of oil for much higher prices. The final important note is that when oil goes up, so does basically everything else. That is why when we look at the sector performance of all the S&P 500 industries, we see this over the past week: Now, the main issue causing oil to remain elevated for an extended period is Iran’s unwillingness to back down at the current moment. This is forcing Trump to remain involved and is almost entirely decreasing the “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) ability. So, what exactly does this mean? Should we start going long oil? Should we start shorting oil? You will hear a ton of “self-proclaimed investment gurus” throwing opinions and commentary out there like they have been in the oil business for years… my recommendation? DO NOT LISTEN. I just recently saw a large publication on Substack tell their subscribers to short oil and go long gold… that is potentially the worst advice I have ever heard, and if anyone followed this advice, they are in a world of hurt right now. I do not have any direct recommendations like that, but I can tell you what we are currently doing. Since we have been sitting on nearly 50% cash positions, we have executed some trades (deploying about 20-30% of our cash) in some undervalued names, a few in the oil/energy space, and a few other undervalued names in other sectors. I love this positioning. When oil spikes, there is almost always a risk for a black swan event to occur (something out of the ordinary) that causes a drastic fall in prices, and I do not want to be caught with my pants down if that were to happen. I think the one-off bets we have in the oil space will help secure upside while other names in the portfolio fall. On the other hand, if a black swan event occurs and oil comes crashing down, the 50% positions we hold in our portfolios will negate the potential crashes in our oil bets. Currently, I think we are going to see the war remain at a standstill, and we will see $80+ oil through the end of the month at least. Iran really doesn’t have a reason to back down — yet — and I am sure they are aware of the previous TACO moves Trump has pulled with countries in the past. Again, I say, I like where we are. Current portfolio composition is the following: Portfolios: 50% Individual Bets: 25% (this is between 20-30% right now).Cash/Equivalents: 25% In this current setup, we have minimal exposure to high upside oil/gas investments and a medium exposure to lower-risk quality businesses in our portfolios. This is always the way we have wanted our barbell-centric portfolio to operate. Low-risk ideas on one side, high-risk bets on the other. It has served us well in the past and is serving us well now. One more key thing about oil: over the next 18 months, I can almost guarantee you that oil prices will be lower than they are right now. Yes, quote me on it. One Final Thought (*IMPORTANT*) The current price of oil is a black swan event. Something that only happens once in a blue moon, and there is always something big that happens after moments like this… Everyone starts to focus extremely hard on the cause of the black swan event and how to fix it. So, what does that mean for the current oil craze? When this event ends, everyone in the US is going to start talking about our reliance on external energy, and everyone will ask, “How can we reduce this reliance?” This is going to put alternative energy back into a bull cycle, and the additional tailwind of AI energy demand will bring energy stocks to unprecedented levels. This will not happen overnight! We will probably see a 2-3 year bullish investment cycle into alternative energy (specifically related to natural gas and uranium). We will likely also see huge investments into infrastructure (energy-related) in the US, as well. This bodes extremely well for our AI Second Hand Effects portfolio. All Current One-Off Bets We currently have about 25% of our available cash balance invested in some one-off investments. Those names are as follows:

    21 min

  6. Mar 15

    The Saturday Sendout | A Review of All Current Research

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Enjoy this article thanks to Cash App! Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. Just A Few Side Bets… We recently came across some stocks we thought had outperforming potential and sent them out to subscribers. They also got posted here: TheSimpleSide.news. These trades are now up 1.53% on average. We also started a new service for paying subscribers, which offers deep value monthly stock picks. These can be found here: TheSimpleSide.news/monthly-picksThese trades are now down 1.11% on average. What I have for paying subscribers today is a quick look into two additional bets worth looking into. One in the AI-related realm and one in the oil-related realm. Before we get into all of those one-off bets, I want to quickly highlight what the macro quant tracker has been doing recently. Remember, this is a purely data-driven approach to the economy and the markets. As a note, we now offer all of the following to paying subscribers: 3 Copyable Portfolios on Autopilot-The Flagship Fund-AI Bets-Tech Growth+The Macro Portfolio+Monthly Stock Picks+Weekly Stock Picks+One-Off Research Reports That is an absolutely insane amount of value for the subscription price we offer, and I am happy to do it all! Macro Quant Views Before we get into anything, I want to show you the current portfolio performance from the Macro Quant Portfolio. If you do not know, this is a portfolio available to subscribers that makes a weekly allocation to either TLT, SPY, or GLD. We started this macro portfolio on Jan 1 of this year. Here is the YTD performance: What you will notice is that we have captured the GLD rally early in the year with a near 90% allocation to gold for almost all of 2026. In fact, I will share the image of what our rating of gold has been every day so far this year… as you can see, we have been in either buy or strong buy territory for nearly the entire year, and this has paid off handsomely. Interestingly, gold has entered into a period of “strong buy” again. Almost every time we have seen this in the past, we have seen GLD go on a run-up after. Of course, past performance isn’t a perfect indicator of future returns, but this seems bullish. Now, if we switch gears and look at the overall economy, we have reached the highest level of buying indication that I have ever seen since starting this program early this year. TLT, SPY, and GLD are all sitting in “buy” buckets right now (something available to our paid subscribers) on our website. This is the first time this has happened since about April of 2025, I believe. In general, what does this mean? Well, it means the market is likely overreacting to the situation in Iran, and the SPY could be entering into strong buy territory soon. On the other hand, we might see inflation remaining sticky and rate cuts less likely to happen. This is great news for gold, as there could be a further rotation from equities if that is the case, and this could turn into more GLD upside. In general, if you are invested in any of my portfolios, I would just remain calm at this point. I don’t think there is a reason for any sort of freak-out moment. The data seems to be supporting strong market dynamics, and the selloff on oil will not be a market-crashing event. Something I do want to highlight is that my cash holdings have decreased by around 20% due to the recent bets that I have made. That means we are sitting on 30% cash holdings, and even with that number, I feel extremely safe with the current market volatility. Research Bets If you are a free subscriber, you are getting blocked off a bit early today. I apologize, but a lot of these ideas, I think, are extremely high upside ideas, and that is what everyone who subscribes pays me the big bucks for! If you would like to join, you can do so by clicking the button below.

    11 min

  7. Feb 28

    We Called It - Energy Still On The Rise & Software Stocks Recovering

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Enjoy this article thanks to Nibbles! Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here Help Me Help You! One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. Do I get to say that we called it yet? Just about two weeks ago, I posted my typical Saturday Sendout newsletter & podcast. I was discussing how the software selloff seemed irrational. We were seeing a software stock selloff on AI replacement fears, and at the same time, we were seeing the mag 7 selloff on fears that AI capex wouldn’t generate substantial returns. I titled the article: “The AI Paradox | Nobody Wins and Everyone Loses” for this reason. Can we have both? Can AI replace software companies while investment in AI loses its value? The answer is glaringly obvious: No. It must be one way or the other, and it seems that other investors have been coming to the same consensus this week. Stocks like INTU, RELX, and TTAN were all huge losers during the AI scare that has been going on for really the past year. The stocks are down drastically from their highs: -55%, -50%, and -55%, respectively. From the Tuesday after we posted that article, the stocks are now up 7.88%, 14.25%, and 18.67% while the SPY is up 0.46% and the NASDAQ 100 is up 1.04%. Now, I am not saying that we called it perfectly and software stocks will continue rising for months on end and we are all going to get rich investing in them, but the more important takeaway is the framework we had to have to “rationalize” the market’s irrationality. Ben Graham — mentor to Warren Buffett — was one of the first people to really make a point of this. He was reflecting on the fact that sentiment and news quickly adjust market prices. People vote on whether they think the news is bullish or bearish for a stock on a daily basis. In the long run, however, the market always returns to fundamentals (aka the weighing machine). One of the most important ways investors, businessmen, or entrepreneurs have made their fortunes is through a process called “riding the wave.” I am sure you know what that means, but in case you don’t, let me give you a quick recap. Picture a surfer. He is waiting in the water, then he turns and starts to paddle. Just as the wave starts to crest, he jumps on his board, and all he has to do is stay upright as the wave brings him along. This is one of the most powerful investing mental models. There is always some sort of wave out there. Some are bigger than others, some bring you closer to the shore, some of them you don’t see, some can wreck you, and some can make you lots of money. The waves can be small and unseen by most, or they can be huge, and everyone stands witnesses. When Les Schwab started in the tire business, he struggled to compete with others around him. Tire manufacturers would open up stores right next to his, and these were the same tire manufacturers that he had to buy his tires from. How could he compete when the company would sell their tiers cheaper than he could buy them for? Well, Les rode the foreign tire wave. Toyo tires entered the market with a cheaper alternative and wouldn’t force Les to overpay. Well, Les rode the foreign tire wave, and his company, Les Schwab Tire, would end up selling after his death for over $3 billion. Now, most people probably never saw the foreign tire wave, but it made Les Schwab a very wealthy man. Les got lucky because he sort of fell into the wave he rode throughout his lifetime. Investors like us are not so lucky. We have to do something that Les never had to, and that something is the hardest thing to do for any and every one: developing the vision to find the wave early. The Gold Rush & The AI Wave I won’t bend your ear about this again, but I wrote this article months ago discussing the “second-hand effects” of the AI wave. I compared it to the gold rush that occurred back in the 1800s, where the people getting rich were not the ones panning for gold, but rather the ones selling them their picks and shovels. Sure, every once in a while, someone would find gold and strike it rich, but the majority of the folks who went out there in search of fortune ended up with nothing more than the picks and shovels they bought when they went down there. In our initial article, we called out three key areas: semiconductor tool manufacturers/suppliers, data centers, and screens (we were a bit off on the screens thing). Some of the names we called out were ASML, AMAT, LRCX, and KLAC — all of which have had incredible runs since then. The one thing I missed back in June, which I posted about in November, was energy. One of the things I realized when putting together that article in November was that energy would be the hardest part of the AI buildout to start and sustain. The complications were (and still are) endless: the lack of supply, the aging grid, the distaste toward nuclear. These are all mounting tailwinds for the energy sector. Take it from the man who is driving a majority of the AI race: Nvidia CEO, Huang: Not only does he say that energy is the limiting factor, but his business is showing it, too. Currently, NVDA's finished goods inventories have grown to historic levels. Part of the reason for this growing level of inventory is CEO Huang’s belief that the demand level in 2026 will require it; however, it shows quite clearly that GPUs are NOT the limiting supply factor and will not demand huge premiums forever (unless demand runs wild again this year). Regardless, one thing remains true AI is worthless without data to train on, that data cannot be trained on unless those GPUs are available, those GPUs are worthless unless they have the power needed to run them. Everything comes back to the power supply. A report from the International Energy Agency shows a great representation of what I have been talking about for the past year or so. We are still anywhere from 4 to 5 years out from energy demand/growth, even getting close to leveling off. The other tailwind we are looking at is the rising energy costs. As much as it sucks to hear for those struggling with energy bills, data centers and rising costs will not stop anytime soon. The only way to bring these costs down is to flip the supply-demand curve from heavy demand to heavy supply. Again, requiring more investment in American energy production. I think the best investments to be made right now are still in the energy sector. The last thing I will leave you with is the performance of the S&P sectors YTD. So, the question remains, “What is the right move to make?” and the answer isn’t super obvious; however, there are some simple adjustments you can make to stay ahead of the shifting global economy. The first thing I would recommend would be to shift capital into the AI Second-Hand Effects portfolio and the Flagship Fund if you want to put your capital to work. The AI-Second Hand effects portfolio, which you can copy trade on Autopilot (use this link), is energy-centric and has been a clear winner over the past few months, and is outperforming the S&P by around 23% since July of 2025. We have been discussing the potential diversification of this portfolio if we can find other opportunities within the AI second-hand market, but valuations are still extremely high, and we have no reason to be in a rush. Now, I am going to get into our portoflios for paid subscribers, but whether you are a free or a paid subscriber, be on the lookout for 2 energy names coming your way over the next week. Quick Macro Views Macro seems relatively stable from a numbers standpoint. With the war (something we cannot account for in numbers), this probably drops into hold or slight sell territory. The general economy looks fine, again from a number standpoint. Sure, things have been "decreasing” over the past month, but in general no strong reaction from models either way. See the following for macro stances on SPY, GLD, and TLT. These are available to paying subscribers in real time on my website: https://thesimpleside.news/macro-indicators Portfolios & Next Week’s Moves Whether or not you agree with me that energy is going to be the tail that wags the dog, I think you should pay attention to the current market’s price action. Now, I am going to give everyone an early access look at the stocks I will be posting research articles on next week. We have one name that is a very high-risk, high-reward play, and one that is set to have longer-term growth. The two names we are looking at for next week are both going to be added to our AI second-hand effects portfolio next week. We are going to wait to see what price action looks like from the recent Iran attacks before going into new companies.

    16 min

  8. Feb 21

    Weekly Market Updates | Top Stock Picks From ETFs & Mutual Funds

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com Enjoy this article thanks to Groundfloor — if you are looking for a place to keep your “sidelined” cash, Groundfloor might be the spot (perfect for our strong cash position). Reminders: Copy Trading HerePortfolio Views HereMacro Indicators HereResearch Reports Here Help Me Help You One of the things I want to do more than anything else is ensure that you all are getting what you want from me. Please take a bit of time this weekend to let me know what you think can be improved upon in the newsletter by clicking the link below. There aren’t a million questions, nor am I collecting data, I just want to hear from you. You can let me know what you want me to write about, weekly things you want to see more of, if you want me to cover earnings, anything! I am happy to hear it all! Thank you so much. I truly appreciate it. Simple Side Shareholders, welcome back to another weekly edition of The Saturday Sendout from The Simple Side. A few key things that happened this week, both in the markets and with the portfolios: some good, some bad. Before we get into it all, I want to quickly highlight what our quant macro indicator is flashing. Right now, we have shifted out of the “buy” territory for the general economy. This is the first time we have dropped into a hold since last week. This wavering between hold and buy has been happening since the beginning of the year. The highest level we have reached was 0.35 (still a far cry away from the max value of 1), and the lowest we have reach this year has been -0.049 (which is no where near strong sell territory). What is frustrating is that we are getting no clear signal (buy or sell) from the model. One of the things that we do know is that these periods of “waiting” — while not common — do happen from time to time. The most recent one occurred mid to late 2025 when we saw no clear signal from April to July (over 4 months in limbo). In this case, we have been in limbo since November 2025 (a current total of 4 months). One of the benefits of being a paid subscriber here at The Simple Side is getting access to a collective of portfolios that we offer. While not all of our subscribers follow these portfolios, many do and those that have followed the Macro Portfolio have outperformed the S&P 500 handily so far in 2026. The current portfolio is up about 14% YTD outpacing the S&P 500’s return of 0.74% YTD. You can find this portfolio on the “Portfolios” tab on our website: https://thesimpleside.news/. The macro indicators can be seen here: https://thesimpleside.news/macro-indicators. The total macro indicator isn’t the only place where we are “missing” clear conviction, in the quant model we have built on the S&P 500 we are also witnessing a “I don’t know” feeling. We have been bouncing back and forth between the “sell - hold - buy” levels since the beginning of this year (again, with no conviction). So basically, it seems like the underlying economy is conflicted relative to the current valuation of the stock market. What does that mean for us? Well, it means keep calm and carry on. We have been holding 50% cash since that red circle you see on that chart. That is the beginning of 2025. Since then, the stock market is up about 16% and I am not upset in the slightest about the fact that 50% of our cash has missed out on that run. The market is still devilishly overvalued. This ratio shows the Wilshire 5000 index against the Gross National Product of the US — an indicator that is well known as “The Buffett Indicator.” The US market just can’t seem to return company valuations to “normal” levels. I think the huge swing up we are seeing can be “blamed” on two factors * The popularization of retail trading and $0 commission trading. * The AI “super cycle” which is leading to a huge “potential income” boost. Both of these are still playing out and they, of course, have multiplied one another. Regardless, the world won’t stop moving, overvalued or not. The other thing that won’t stop are the richest people in the world getting richer, and boy have they made some interesting moves recently… 13F, ETF, and Mutual Fund Information Where has the smartest money in the world been putting their capital? I worked with the team over at insideredges.com to put together a quick list of 5 stocks that these investors have been snapping up across the board. Before we get into that, I first want to share with you some of the craziest data that the IE team shared with me. After the stock market crashed in 2022, ETFs, Mutual Funds, and 13F investors all seemingly had a perfect grasp on some companies that they wanted to buy. In January 2023, 5 key stocks popped as being heavily bought by all three groups. Those key stocks? * META * NVDA * NFLX * AMZN * ADBE Over the next year those companies would return 194%, 239%, 65%, 80%, and 77% respectively, and an equal weighting portfolio of those companies would have returned 131% in just one year. They managed to do it again in 2024 picking only 3 key stocks: META, NVDA, and AMZN which returned an equal weighted portfolio 93%. In 2025 it was more of the same and the portfolio returned 41.33%. Now, heading into 2026, the 3 wealthiest groups in the world have spoken and have highlighted a new set of 5 key stocks. 1. Nvidia — NVDA The number one pick 13F filers was NVDA. The stock is up only 1.78% YTD and is one of the few AI hype companies to really produce profits from the “hype” surrounding the company. It is now one of the most necessary, and impressive companies that exists in the world today. Currently, the company boasts a 3yr revenue growth of about 61%, net margins that eclipse 50%, and ROIC - WACC of 166% : 18.64% (one of the most impressive metrics I have ever seen). Not only are their profits impressive but the balance sheet matches just as well. Their cash holdings are now over 40 billion dollars and their debt is a measly 10 billion. Wildly impressive numbers from the behemoth, but what I find more impressive are the “smart money” moves that have been happening. Over 7% of all mutual funds and over 12.11% of all ETFs are buying up the stock in early 2026. It is the same story with the 13F filers of the world, over 31% are buying in. Now, when a huge majority of the worlds wealthiest are willing to all go in on the same company, what do we think is going to happen? I bet they do everything they can to keep that company riding high. 2. AppLovin — APP AppLovin is an interesting choice because the stock is down over 37% YTD. However, it seems like analysts and “smart money” disagree with me. Currently, 11% of 13F filers are buying in, 6% of mutual funds are buying in, and 6% of ETFs are buying in as well. Oh, and the analysts? They are heavily weighted towards “buy” and “outperform” ratings. The lowest current estimate is set at $455 which is an 9% return from the current price. The highest estimate is set at $860 which is a 105% return, and the middle of the road price the stock at $670 or a 60% return (ridiculous numbers across the board). A quick DCF analysis on my end pegs the price of the stock at 20% returns over the next year, or a fair value of 529.13 (a bit more reasonable than the analysts). I am assuming free cash flow will grow at a pace of 50% for the next 5 years which is less than the current 5 year trend of 81.5%, less than the current 3yr trend of 118%, and is less than the all time trend for the company of 67.66%. Seems like a fair assumption to me. Regardless of what I think, “smart money” is going all in. 3. Tesla — TSLA Okay, I need to start going through these a bit faster… Tesla is a name on this list that I did not expect to see. The stock is down 8% YTD and is currently price quick high in my opinion — but again, in the world of mutual funds and ETFs, my opinion doesn’t matter all that much. Tesla stock hasn’t seen great revenue growth recently, so maybe insiders know something big is coming… To me, and again I say “to me” because we are focusing on the trades of those running portfolios much larger than mine, Tesla looks like a completely speculative bet. That, or it is a bet on Elon Musk and the potential for more M&A between his companies. In general, the company holds a strong cash position and is starting to see more and more revenue come from the energy generation segment of their business. Large buyers in Q4 of 2025 include Renaissance Technologies, George Soros, and Mario Gabelli. As for the big numbers we are paying attention to 24% of 13F filers are buying alongside 6% of mutual funds and 8% of ETFs. 4. AMD — Advanced Micro Devices AMD is a name that I am happy to see on this list. Yes, the company is up over 160% in the past three year, but I think they are relatively overlooked in the AI race. Their revenue growth hasn’t had the same NVDA trajectory, but it does look like their balance sheet is starting to benefit from the AI wave. The company’s cash position jumped to nearly 2x the prior quarters size in Q4 as all of their key metrics started to perk up. Key buyers here were Renaissance Technologies and Jefferies Group which make this a particularly interesting purchase. This is the 13th quarter in a row that Jefferies Group has purchased AMD, and is their second largest purchase of the company. The big numbers from purchasers are as follows: 18% of 13F5% of mutual funds8% of ETFs 5. NOW — ServiceNow This is another one of the names that I am happy to see, but am also astonished to see. ServiceNow is one of the recently beaten down software companies down over 55% from their highs over the past few years, and down 30% YTD. However, “smart money” doesn’t seem to care. NOW has been a growth machine, just constantly growing revenue, operating income, and free cash flow quarter over q

    26 min
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The Saturday Sendout is tradeable market news in one place. Get weekly financial information on insider, company executive, and politician trading plus tons of other insights. thesimpleside.substack.com

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  • Creator
    The Simple Side
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    83
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    Clean
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    © The Simple Side
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    The Saturday Sendout