The AEA Strategy Briefing
Macro positioning, the semiconductor/AI-infrastructure thesis, and current portfolio reallocation, assembled onto one page from data already published across this site.
Looking for what I got wrong?
Every full letter includes a dedicated "Portfolio Review & Retrospective" section, using the same repeatable structure every time so mistakes are checkable rather than buried in prose:
- The Original Thesis
- What I said I believed or intended to do, quoted from a prior letter.
- The Reality
- What actually happened, including whether the outcome came from my own action or from the market resolving something I didn't.
- The Lesson
- The specific process or risk-assessment flaw exposed — not a restatement of the mistake, but what changes going forward because of it.
Jump straight to the latest post-mortem.
How this archive is organized
Two kinds of entries live here, both dated and both public even when they're not flattering:
- Monthly Positioning
- The full letter — thesis, performance vs. SPY, and the Portfolio Review & Retrospective section above.
- Interim Notes
- Shorter, published when something material happens between full letters — a real event that moved a position enough to be worth writing down in real time.
The archive now runs through the September 10 checkpoint; the 2022 Founding Note remains the beginning of the record.
November 6, 2026 Letter
I’m Measuring the Rebound From Before the DropFriday lifted AMD, Micron and Vertiv. The two-session comparison is a better check on what the bounce actually recovered.
November 5, 2026 Letter
I’m Reviewing the Exposure, Not Explaining Away the LossesAMD, Micron and Vertiv fell together. I want the common assumption written down beside the company-specific evidence.
November 4, 2026 Letter
A Green Market Wasn’t a Green Light for My HoldingsGOOGL and AAL rose while memory, power and cooling exposures fell. The useful record is the split, not an invented account return.
November 3, 2026 Letter
Before AMD Reports, I Want the Questions Written DownA pre-earnings gain is not a result. My portfolio review starts with what the release would have to establish.
November 2, 2026 Letter
Monday’s Index Split Didn’t Diversify My BookThe Dow’s gain and the losses in my chip names are two different records. The research file should keep them separate.
October 30, 2026 Letter
The Intel Selloff Is a Position Review, Not an InstructionINTC, AMD and MU fell together. I want to separate the Intel-specific evidence from the exposure they share.
October 29, 2026 Letter
GOOGL Is in My Portfolio. The Earnings Split Belongs in My Research.A portfolio letter on the different evidence coming from platforms and infrastructure suppliers—not an invented account return or a reaction trade.
October 25, 2026 Letter
Meta Is in My Book. Its Spending Has to Be in My Valuation.The earnings release gives me a better question than whether I still believe in AI: what cash returns am I assuming, and when?
October 18, 2026 Letter
The Memory Thesis Needs a Competition Page, Not Just a Demand ChartA retrospective letter on SNDK, MU and what the week’s semiconductor concerns mean for the questions this book should ask.
October 11, 2026 Letter
I Own Different Businesses. I Still Need to Check for One Customer Problem.A retrospective letter on AI financing, shared dependencies and the difference between a holdings list and a risk map.
October 4, 2026 Letter
A Fed Pause Would Help. It Would Not Fund the Whole Thesis.A retrospective letter after the jobs report, focused on the financing assumptions underneath the portfolio’s growth exposure.
September 27, 2026 Letter
The Same AI Dollar Shows Up on Both Sides of This BookA retrospective portfolio letter on suppliers, customers and why more tickers do not always mean more independent bets.
September 20, 2026 Letter
Before Filling the Next Page, I Need to Keep the Old Problem VisibleA retrospective letter on the September 18 record: a profitable session did not close the Sandisk concentration issue.
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September 18, 2026
The Book Gained $371.30. Sandisk Supplied Nearly All of It.Sandisk added $351.60, Micron $76.04 and AMD $71.80, offsetting losses in Meta and Palo Alto. Net day: +$371.30. No trades; Sandisk finished above the position cap.
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September 16, 2026
The Book Gained $160.14 on Fed Day. SpaceX's $59.12 and Intel's $54.74 Did Most of the WorkSpaceX (+$59.12), Intel (+$54.74) and AMD (+$41.50) led 19 of 32 positions higher on the day the Fed hiked rates for the first time in three years, offsetting a $21.85 drag from SanDisk. Net day: +$160.14. No trades.
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September 15, 2026
The Book Fell $176.61 Today. AMD's $53.95 Gain and Tempus's $26.56 Couldn't Offset Cheesecake Factory, SanDisk and SpaceXAMD (+$53.95), Tempus AI (+$26.56), Meta (+$21.48) and CrowdStrike (+$14.22) rallied while Cheesecake Factory (−$67.52), SanDisk (−$42.19), SpaceX (−$37.28), Estée Lauder (−$35.46) and the leveraged Nebius ETF (−$28.80) led 20 of 32 positions lower. Net day: −$176.61. No trades.
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September 14, 2026
The Book Fell $324.47 Today. Palo Alto's $216.45 Gain Wasn't Enough to Offset SanDisk, AMD and MicronPalo Alto Networks (+$216.45), CrowdStrike (+$57.28) and ServiceNow (+$58.92) rallied on the same AI-safety headlines that sent SanDisk (−$162.72), AMD (−$113.60) and Micron (−$102.46) lower. Net day: −$324.47, on 19 of 32 positions down. No trades.
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September 11, 2026
The Book Gained $118.81 Today. AMD Alone Was Worth More Than Half of ItAMD (+$62.65), Intel (+$36.68) and Vertiv (+$26.79) led 23 of my 32 positions higher on September 11, offsetting a $118.48 drag from SanDisk. Net day: +$118.81. No trades.
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September 10, 2026
The Book Fell $816.28 Today. SanDisk, Micron and AMD Did Most of the Damage.A hot inflation print and a spike in oil sent 27 of my 32 positions lower on September 10, led by SanDisk (−$143.16), Micron (−$100.72) and AMD (−$87.48). Net day: −$816.28. No trades.
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September checkpoint September 10, 2026
The Rule Is Being Tested While the Thesis Is WorkingA current 32-position snapshot, the live 10.16% SNDK breach, the corrected −2.40% daily move, verified September macro releases, and the decisions that are still ahead.
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September 9, 2026 META, VRT, AMD, MU, DDOG
The Book Gained Just $22.33 Today. Meta Was Worth $186.18 of ItMeta's Muse-driven rally added $186.18 to my 32-holding book on September 9, almost entirely offset by a $83.82 loss on Vertiv that the news doesn't explain. Net day: +$22.33. No trades.
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September 4, 2026 SNDK, MU, AMD, NOW, NFLX
The Book Gained $929.03 Today. SanDisk Alone Was Worth $370 of ItSanDisk, Micron, AMD and the leveraged Nebius ETF drove a $929.03 gain across my 32 holdings on September 4, more than offsetting losses in ServiceNow, SpaceX, Netflix and Alphabet. No trades.
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September 2, 2026 PANW, DDOG, NOW, META, MU
A Nearly Flat Day That Didn't Feel Like One: My Cybersecurity Sleeve Lost $294 While the Book Fell Just $19.82Palo Alto Networks, Datadog, ServiceNow, CrowdStrike and Fortinet combined to cost me $294.19 after Palo Alto's earnings reaction. Meta, Micron, SanDisk, Talen and the leveraged Nebius ETF offset nearly all of it. Net book impact: -$19.82. No trades.
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September 1, 2026 PANW, SNDK, AMD, MU
Tuesday Erased Monday and Then Some: The Book Fell $646.43 on 30 of 32 PositionsThe book fell $646.43 Tuesday, more than double Monday's $265.28 gain. Palo Alto Networks alone was the single largest drag at -$100.20 -- the same position that was Monday's second-best gainer. 30 of 32 positions closed lower. No trades.
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August 31, 2026 SNDK, PANW, MU, META
Monday Reversed Friday: +$265.28, and SanDisk Alone Did 61.6% of the WorkThe book rose $265.28 Monday, recovering more than half of Friday's -$430.79 loss. Sandisk alone added $163.44 -- 61.6% of the gain -- while Palo Alto Networks, Micron and CrowdStrike also closed higher. 17 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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August 28, 2026 NBIL, PANW, AMD, NOW
Twenty-Four of 32 Positions Fell Friday. Tempus AI Alone Was a Third of the Damage.A net -$430.79 Friday, led by NBIL, Palo Alto Networks and AMD, against gains in ServiceNow and Meta. 24 of 32 positions closed lower. No trades.
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August 20, 2026 MU, SNDK, CRWD, PANW
Memory Paid for the Security Drawdown, and I Traded NothingA split session inside the book: two memory positions covered most of what four security-software names took away, and none of the decliners produced a company-specific reason.
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August 24, 2026 SNDK, MU, META, TEM
The Worst Session of the Month, and Still No TradeTwo memory positions were more than half the day’s $658 drawdown, not one large decliner produced company news, and the session found a gap in my written rules rather than a reason to transact.
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Interim Note August 25, 2026
AMD and a Leveraged Nebius Bet Add $293 to the Book, Even With Palo Alto’s Worst Day in a WhileAMD, a 2x leveraged Nebius fund, and Meta led a net +$293 Tuesday, while Palo Alto Networks gave back $55 with no headline explaining it. 21 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades, and a look at what NBIL's 2x-daily mechanics actually mean in dollars.
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Interim Note August 21, 2026
Estée Lauder Added $104 to the Book on a Friday the Index Barely MovedEstée Lauder, Cheesecake Factory, and Palo Alto Networks led a net +$235 Friday, while Intel and Micron pulled the other way. 18 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades, and a look at how much room the biggest names still have.
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Interim Note August 19, 2026
WhiteFiber Fell 21% in a Day, and Estée Lauder Quietly Covered Most of ItA second consecutive day of AI-infrastructure debt repricing hit WhiteFiber, Nebius, and my leveraged NBIL position hard, while Estée Lauder's earnings beat and a Bitcoin rally offset most of the damage. 12 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 18, 2026
CoreWeave Fell 12%, My Leveraged Nebius Position Fell 15%, and I Made Zero TradesA debt-financing-cost repricing hit CoreWeave, Nebius, Talen, Vertiv, and WhiteFiber — the sleeve of my book I’m most exposed to. Vertiv closed below my cost basis for the first time. No trades.
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Interim Note August 17, 2026
Memory Had a Reason to Rally; My Software Names Didn’t Have One to FallSanDisk rose 8.88% and Micron rose 4.13% on a real reshoring policy signal, while ServiceNow, Datadog, Nebius, and Meta fell as the 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007. 7 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Monthly Positioning August 2026
The Month the Site Went StaleThe book is flat since July while single sessions look dramatic, six positions caught up on earnings, and a full audit of all 238 pages found three of my own pages publishing claims that had quietly become false — including two that described the opposite of what was happening.
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Interim Note August 14, 2026
The Leveraged Position Did Exactly What It Says on the LabelNebius rose 8.88% and its 2x leveraged ETF NBIL rose 17.77% Friday, almost exactly double, while SanDisk jumped on an investor day and Broadcom and CrowdStrike fell without explanation. 15 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 13, 2026
Two Real Gains and One I Still Can’t ExplainSanDisk rose 13.67% and Netflix rose 5.43% Thursday on real, dated news, while Datadog rose 4.70% on none I can find. 20 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 11, 2026
And Then Half of the Rebound Went Away TooDatadog fell 5.37% Tuesday, giving back nearly half of Monday's rebound, while Nebius rallied 4.95% on a real strategy shift and SpaceX slipped below my cost basis. 20 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 10, 2026
The Half of Datadog’s Drop That Came BackDatadog rose 11.48% Monday, partially reversing its still-unexplained August 6 decline, as chips sold off and software rallied across the book. 14 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 7, 2026
Three Earnings Prints I Can Trace, One Move I Can’tSpaceX, Rocket Lab, ServiceNow, and CoreWeave all rallied on real, dated catalysts Friday, while Tempus AI's 12.86% jump had no source I could find. 19 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
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Interim Note August 6, 2026
Datadog Fell 19%, Symbotic Fell 15%, and I Can’t Tell You WhySpaceX rebounded 6.14% on a $1 trillion revenue pledge, Nebius fell another 13.29% on Meta-competition selling pressure, and Datadog and Symbotic both dropped double digits with no dated news explaining either move. No trades.
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Interim Note August 5, 2026
SpaceX Guided to $1 Trillion and Fell 13.6% AnywaySpaceX guided to a $100B run rate by December and fell 13.61% on lockup expiration and a Musk-Nvidia exclusivity announcement. AMD fell 7.04% despite record data-center revenue. No trades.
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Interim Note August 4, 2026
Arm Jumps 17%, Intel and SanDisk Both Rally 11% — No TradesTuesday was another broad rally: 29 of my 32 positions closed higher. Arm jumped 17.36%, Intel and SanDisk each rose 10.84%, and Vistra fell 8.15% for reasons I can't explain. No trades.
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Interim Note August 3, 2026
NBIL Jumps 23%, Nebius and CoreWeave Surge Double Digits — No TradesMonday was a broad, earnings-driven rally: 31 of my 32 positions closed higher. NBIL jumped 23.08%, Nebius rose 11.64%, and CoreWeave rose 19.49% -- two of them names hit by the Aschenbrenner fire sale two days earlier. No trades.
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Interim Note July 31, 2026
Alphabet Jumps 6.7%, Micron and SanDisk Slide Again — No TradesAmazon and Apple were the day's two biggest movers, and I hold neither. Alphabet jumped 6.73% on its own earnings, Micron and SanDisk gave back ground to rising rates, Vertiv and Fortinet rallied. No trades.
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Interim Note July 28, 2026
SanDisk Falls 14%, NBIL Falls Nearly 20% — A Rough Tuesday, No TradesA Chinese chipmaker's $487 billion IPO hit the memory/AI-infrastructure bucket hard — SanDisk, Micron, Nebius, NBIL, CoreWeave, Arm, and more all down — while ServiceNow and Netflix rallied. No trades.
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Interim Note July 24, 2026
A Second Rough Day for AI Infrastructure, and an Earnings Beat the Market Sold AnywayFive positions moved sharply on two separate storylines Friday — neocloud capex skepticism hit CoreWeave and Nebius, memory-cycle doubt hit SanDisk, Micron, and Arm — while Intel fell despite its best quarter in 15 years. No trades.
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Interim Note July 23, 2026
American Airlines' Roughest Day in Months, and Alphabet Falls Despite Beating EstimatesAn oil-price shock and an AI-capex re-rating hit on the same Thursday, landing on two positions I hold for very different reasons — and one, Micron, actually benefited.
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Interim Note July 22, 2026
ServiceNow's Roughest Day in Months, and SpaceX Falls Further Below CostA quiet index day hid a genuinely mixed one for the book — ServiceNow's worst day in months and a fourth SpaceX decline in two weeks, partly offset by gains in the power and AI-hardware names.
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Interim Note July 21, 2026
Nvidia Just Told the Market What It Thinks of Nebius — And SanDisk Finally Stopped FallingNvidia's disclosed stake in Nebius and a bullish Morgan Stanley call on SanDisk both hit the same day for two of my own positions — worth writing down while it's happening.
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Interim Note July 20, 2026
SpaceX Drops Below My Cost Basis, and I'm Still Not SellingA quiet index day hid two sharp moves in my own Spec bucket — SpaceX on a scrubbed Starship test, Tempus AI on acquisition scrutiny — and why neither one is a trade.
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Interim Note July 19, 2026
I Went and Checked the AI Capex NumberA follow-up to the July 17 note: real Q1 2026 SEC filing data on Alphabet and Meta's free cash flow coverage of their own AI capex, and what it does and doesn't change about holding both.
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Interim Note July 17, 2026
A Rough Session, and Why I'm Not Touching AnythingA broad Thursday selloff hit Netflix, SanDisk, and SpaceX on three unrelated theses, against a backdrop of rising worry about whether AI infrastructure spending still pays for itself.
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Interim Note July 10, 2026
A Good Week for the Book, for Two Unrelated ReasonsMicron's $250B manufacturing commitment and Meta's confirmed AI chip start date both moved the book green this week — on two theses that need to stay separate in my head, not one.
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Interim Note July 8, 2026
One Theme, Three Different ReactionsAlphabet joins the Dow, Meta's own stock whipsaws on its cloud pivot, and the same AI-infrastructure theme moves four holdings four different ways in one week.
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Interim Note July 7, 2026
A Record Market, a Rough Week for the Core SleeveA short between-letters check-in: a record Dow, a real selloff in 28.52% of the book, and why that combination is worth writing down.
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Monthly Positioning July 2026
Portfolio Composition & Ongoing RisksAn honest map of all 32 holdings and the three things that could hurt me most.
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Interim Note June 19, 2026
The Turnaround Position Just Had Its Best WeekIntel's Apple foundry deal confirmation moved a position bought years before the deal existed — a short note on what that does and doesn't prove.
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Founding Note 2022 · written in retrospect
Why I Wrote the Rules Before I Needed ThemHow the $500 start and the Investment Policy Statement actually came first — and an honest note on the limits of reconstructing that period from memory.