August 2026 · Interim Note
The Leveraged Position Did Exactly What It Says on the Label
Friday was a quiet index day — the S&P 500 fell 0.20%, the Nasdaq-100 fell 0.14%, small-caps actually rose 0.52% — and a genuinely wide one underneath it. 15 of my 32 positions closed higher, but the spread between the winners and losers was large in both directions.
NBIL did exactly what a 2x ETF is supposed to do
Nebius rose 8.88% to $277.68, extending the rally that started with its August 12 earnings report — a real quarter, with the adjusted net loss narrowing to $33 million from $92 million a year earlier and EBITDA swinging to positive $236 million. My leveraged position in NBIL, GraniteShares' 2x daily Nebius ETF, rose 17.77%. That is almost exactly double Nebius's own move, which is the entire point of holding a 2x product and also exactly the kind of day that reminds me why it's a small, deliberately sized position in the book rather than a bigger one: the same math that doubled Friday's gain will double the next bad day just as cleanly. Full writeup on the News page.
SanDisk, still my largest position, rose 7.39% to $1,641.11 after Thursday's investor day produced real fiscal-2030 targets and a fresh JPMorgan overweight rating with a $2,250 price target. AMD, a smaller position, rose 6.50% to $514.39, rebounding from a stretch where it had been down roughly 15% off its highs on valuation worries — I don't have a specific dated catalyst for Friday's bounce itself, and I'd rather say that plainly than invent one.
The other side of the ledger
Broadcom fell 5.94% to $392.99 and CrowdStrike fell 3.80% to $216.95, both without a same-day catalyst I could source — CrowdStrike's decline is at least contextualized by reporting that frames it as position-trimming ahead of the company's own upcoming investor update. Tempus AI fell 4.03% and Coinbase fell 3.53%, also unexplained in what I could find. None of that changes a thesis I've written up; it's dispersion, not signal.
Separately, and worth flagging even though it didn't move my numbers Friday: Alphabet, a core holding, closed a $25 billion debt offering, with some of it not due until 2066. I go into why that matters more than a single day's stock move in today's Opinion piece.
No trades today
The Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist for exactly this kind of session — a leveraged ETF swinging harder than its underlying, two clean rallies, and a handful of unexplained drops are all data, not a decision. Nothing here changes a thesis I've written up.