Summary since inception.
| Period | Portfolio | S&P 500 | vs. Benchmark | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | −19.3% | +1.4% | −20.7% | First full month |
| Dec 2025 * | +11.8% | +2.4% | +9.4% | Partial · Dec 23–31 |
| * Partial month only (8 trading days). Not meaningful for performance attribution. | ||||
Active positions.
Remaining portfolio allocation is held in FDRXX/SPAXX money market funds earning ~3.69% yield. This is deliberate—"dry powder" for RBRK opportunistic adds and future positions, including the Databricks IPO reserve.
How returns are calculated.
Method: Time-weighted return (TWR). This eliminates the distortion caused by adding or withdrawing capital, allowing apples-to-apples comparison against the S&P 500 benchmark.
Benchmark: SPY ETF total return (dividends reinvested), calculated using the same time-weighted method over the identical period.
Included: All realized gains and losses, all unrealized gains and losses on open positions, dividends received, and all transaction costs and fees.
Excluded: New capital deposits and withdrawals (removed by TWR calculation), cash held outside brokerage account, and tax impacts (pre-tax returns shown).
Verification: All figures derived directly from personal Fidelity brokerage statements. This data is self-reported and has not been independently verified by any third party. Monthly statements showing beginning balance, ending balance, and all transactions are maintained and available upon reasonable request.
What this track record means right now.
A 2-month track record is not meaningful evidence of skill versus luck. The honest interpretation: this is a permanent, unrevised record of decisions and outcomes. It cannot be retroactively edited. That's the value of publishing it now—not to demonstrate performance, but to create a document that will matter in 2030.
Professional standard: Institutional investors require 3–5 year track records. This portfolio will not be a meaningful representation of skill until at minimum December 2028.
What would trigger a sale.
Positions are held through price volatility. Positions are sold when the investment thesis breaks. These are different things.
Path to independent verification.
Where the framework was not followed.
A track record that only documents successes and clean decisions is marketing, not documentation. This section logs every meaningful deviation from the stated framework, in real time, with honest analysis of what happened and why it was wrong.
DDOG was on the watchlist as a legitimate 5-year category leader with a framework score of 8.5/10. The buy decision was made ahead of DDOG's Q4 2025 earnings announcement — not purely on framework score, but with the earnings catalyst in mind. DDOG reported strong results (29% revenue growth, beat on EPS) and jumped ~16% intraday on February 10, 2026. The position was held through the pop. Over the following days, the stock retraced most of the gain. Subsequently, half of the DDOG position was sold and proceeds were used to add to RBRK at ~$50.
Two separate issues, both worth naming clearly.
Issue 1 — Entry timing: The framework does not say "buy great companies before catalysts." It says find companies scoring 8.0+ and hold for years. Timing a buy around an earnings announcement is event-driven speculation layered on top of a thesis. If DDOG belongs in the portfolio, the earnings date is irrelevant to that decision. The correct process: buy when the framework score and valuation align, then hold through all earnings events without reacting to them.
Issue 2 — Selling into strength then retracing: Holding through the 16% pop and watching it retrace is a predictable outcome when a buy is made ahead of a known catalyst. The "right" price to own DDOG for a 5-year thesis exists independent of any single earnings report. Buying before earnings and selling half shortly after is the opposite of the stated holding behavior.
DDOG did score 8.5/10 on the framework and was a legitimate portfolio candidate. The subsequent reallocation — selling half of DDOG to add RBRK at ~$50 — is consistent with concentrating into the highest-conviction 10-year holding at a lower price than the original entry of $67.51. The capital allocation decision (more RBRK) was reasonable even if the path to get there (DDOG earnings trade) was not.
Earnings events are noise relative to a 5-year holding thesis. If a company belongs in the portfolio, it belongs regardless of when earnings fall. Buying ahead of a known catalyst is speculation — it introduces a short-term price dependency into a long-term conviction. The framework has no "earnings timing" component, and any future decision that includes earnings timing as a factor should be treated as a deviation from process before the trade is made, not after.
Three reasons.
Accountability. Public commitment creates discipline to follow the systematic process rather than rationalizing exceptions. When decisions are documented before outcomes are known, the record is honest.
Permanence. This record cannot be revised with hindsight. Every decision—good and bad—exists permanently. That forces honesty about mistakes in real time rather than rewriting history retroactively.
Documentation toward a goal. The long-term goal is to demonstrate a repeatable, systematic approach to category leader investing over a full market cycle. That demonstration requires starting before you know how it ends.