More buying. Running the playbook. More of the same. I used up another 25% of my emergency savings cushion. I’ve now deployed 70% of that cushion since this pullback began. I am more than happy to allocate the remaining 30% into more multiple contraction. If I use up the entire cushion and deals keep getting better, I may eye using Disney as a source of cash for other names. I don’t really want to, but it’s possible.

I will keep slowly accumulating more shares of healthy companies as rampant exogenous uncertainty unfolds. Nothing has changed since the Macro View article I sent at the start of the month. Some think they can predict the unfolding of wildly chaotic geopolitical headlines. I know that I can’t (nobody can), so I will continue to carefully react. As I said in that article… not time to panic… not time to dogmatically stick our necks out and call a bottom… just the time to carefully capitalize on Mr. Market’s latest dose of madness. There is massive incentive for everyone to resolve tariff risks in a timely manner. And? There will likely be more drama and noise before that happens. I think trying to time when it ends is unproductive. I think methodically taking advantage of it as it continues is the right approach for me. I’ll keep saying it.

This is not 2022 in my mind. Instead, valuations are far more reasonable, inflation is quickly cooling, private sector job openings are resilient and we are gearing up for more macro accommodation… Not several points of rate hikes and quantitative tightening. The arguments are about Nvidia being reasonable at 20x earnings, not an unproven startup being reasonable at 20x sales like in 2021-2022. Night & day.

This is when retail is most vulnerable to throwing in the towel… and this is when it’s most important to stay the course. I am staying the course. Is this fun? Pullbacks never are. But is this exciting in terms of improving risk/reward and giving us better deals? Yes.

Here’s what I added to:

Updated holdings and performance. Performance doesn’t reflect today’s session yet. My compounded annual lead vs. the S&P will likely fall from 12.23% to ~11.9% after today.