August 2026 · Interim Note
Estée Lauder Added $104 to the Book on a Friday the Index Barely Moved
The S&P 500 rose 0.41% Friday, which tells you almost nothing about my book. Estée Lauder added $104 on continued earnings momentum, Cheesecake Factory added $54, and Palo Alto Networks added $42 — against Intel (−$29) and Micron (−$15) pulling the other way. Net impact: +$235. 18 of 32 positions closed higher. No trades.
Where the $235 came from
Figure 1 · Dollar attribution
Five winners covered two losers with room to spare
Share counts × the change in each position’s closing price, August 20 to August 21, 2026. Estée Lauder’s +$104 alone is more than three times Intel and Micron’s combined drag. Source: Massive Market Data closes, applied to my own share counts.
This is the same shape Wednesday had: one large, high-conviction earnings winner covering the losses in a handful of unrelated names. Estée Lauder is an 18-share position bought well below where it trades now, so a 6.02% move on it is worth more in dollars than Tempus AI’s 9.06% move on a 4-share position. Cheesecake Factory, my Growth-bucket restaurant name, had its best single day since I’ve owned it, and I don’t have a dated headline explaining it — logging it as unexplained rather than guessing.
| Position | Close | Day | Book impact | vs. my cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estée Lauder Companies (EL) | $101.94 | +6.02% | +$104.22 | +47.48% |
| The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE) | $113.33 | +6.38% | +$54.40 | +149.63% |
| Palo Alto Networks (PANW) | $357.87 | +2.38% | +$41.55 | +123.23% |
| Tempus AI Inc (TEM) | $72.69 | +9.06% | +$24.16 | +46.16% |
| Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) (SPCX) | $136.97 | +2.22% | +$23.76 | +1.46% |
| Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) | $473.25 | +0.81% | +$18.98 | +137.41% |
| Meta Platforms (META) | $549.90 | +0.75% | +$18.84 | +134.72% |
| Intel Corporation (INTC) | $90.07 | −2.24% | −$28.84 | +140.69% |
| Micron Technology (MU) | $966.78 | −0.77% | −$15.10 | +196.72% |
The position that keeps carrying the book
Estée Lauder rose 6.02% to $101.94, its second consecutive strong session following Wednesday’s 16.30% earnings jump. The Motley Fool’s week-in-review coverage put the cumulative move at 11.8% for the week even after Wednesday’s pop, and flagged the stock as a “hold” rather than a “buy” at 30x forward earnings despite the turnaround progress — a useful check against getting too attached to a position purely because it’s working. I did not add to it. Tempus AI, a much smaller position, rose 9.06% on continued reaction to the Merck-Moderna trial news covered in today’s News article — up 46.16% against my cost now, and still a 4-share position I have not added to.
How much room the big winners still have
Same measurement I’ve run before: how many repeats of a bad session like Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s it would take to erase what these positions have gained since I bought them — a way of converting “up a lot” into a countable number of bad days rather than a feeling.
| Position | Close | vs. my cost | Fall to reach cost | Repeats of a −5% day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micron Technology (MU) | $966.78 | +196.72% | −66.3% | 14 |
| Sandisk Corp (SNDK) | $1,596.08 | +230.36% | −69.7% | 15 |
| Intel Corporation (INTC) | $90.07 | +140.69% | −58.4% | 12 |
| Palo Alto Networks (PANW) | $357.87 | +123.23% | −55.2% | 11 |
| Cheesecake Factory (CAKE) | $113.33 | +149.63% | −59.9% | 12 |
| Estée Lauder (EL) | $101.94 | +47.48% | −32.2% | 7 |
Assumptions, stated plainly. The last column compounds a flat −5% daily move repeatedly until each position reaches my average cost — a size drawn from this week’s actual worst single sessions (WhiteFiber and Nebius both fell more than that on August 19), not a forecast of what will happen next. Daily returns don’t repeat, and a run of 7 to 15 consecutive −5% days has no real precedent in any of these names. It is a unit of measurement, not a prediction: it converts “still way ahead of cost” into a countable number of bad sessions, which is the only form in which that phrase means anything. Estée Lauder has the least room of the group at 7 repeats — worth remembering the next time it has a rough day, since “up 47%” sounds like more cushion than 7 bad sessions actually is.
Bitcoin rose 7.28% and Ethereum rose 8.14% Friday on Clarity Act cloture-vote optimism, per the linked News article. I hold neither, and Coinbase is not in my book — a sideline observation, not a position update, same as it was Wednesday.
No trades today
The Blackout Rule and Holding Period exist for exactly this kind of session. Estée Lauder and Cheesecake Factory are both up sharply and I did not trim either; Intel and Micron both fell and I did not add to either. Same rule, applied in both directions. I made no trades.