A Correction to the Value Picks Tracker

First, some notes on the Value Picks Tracker:

  • I keep track of how our past picks are doing in an Excel spreadsheet, as you know. Sometime in the past few weeks a formula in the spreadsheet was changed that affected the summary totals at the bottom of the spreadsheet — it was no longer including all the picks in the total, including NVDA. I know what happened and how it happened, but not when it happened — at least not yet. The result was that I’d been reporting the total gain of the past picks and S&P 500 incorrectly, and therefore the difference between the two was also incorrect. I apologize for this.

  • This is why the difference between last week’s tracker and this week’s tracker was 11.6%, and our past picks are beating the S&P by 20.4%, a significant difference from the 8.8% gain reported last week.

  • The weekly gain of 0.7% reported below is correct.

  • A pick for META on July 5, 2025 was added to the tracker inadvertently. I’m not sure how that happened. There was no pick of the week for any company that week and META has only been recommended twice, on 4/27/2025, and again on 7/2/2026. It has been removed.

I pride myself on the accuracy of the data I present and am very embarrassed by this error. Any time there’s an error, I address it up front. Please accept my apology.

Value Pick of the Week

No Value Pick this week. I looked very closely at Applied Materials (AMAT), which looks superb following a 38.3% decline since June 30th. It’s beaten expectations and raised guidance and gone down anyway because of Capital Expense spending, which I consider an investment in their future, but the market’s recent hyper-focus on Free Cash Flow (FCF) disagrees with me, so we’ll go with them for the time being. AMAT has a new R&D facility opening in a few weeks and the FY 2026 earnings report comes out at the end of October. That will give us fresh information.

Market Summary

Last week was a four-day week — shortened by the Labor Day holiday. The S&P 500 lost 0.8% with three straight down days, then a Friday bounce that clawed back about half the damage. There were two primary drivers, and two observations for the week:

  • Oil and the Middle East. Brent crude ran from ~$98 Tuesday to $101 Wednesday to $105.37 Thursday — the highest since July. Wednesday was the escalation: Iran fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. Navy warship, and the U.S. destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in response, with Houthi attacks on Saudi energy facilities widening the threat. Strait of Hormuz supply risk was the thing being priced. Friday’s rally was mostly oil backing off 3.6% to $103.70.

  • A Fed rate hike getting locked in. Thursday’s August PPI came in at +0.4% month over month and 5.4% year over year, slightly above forecast, and pushed the odds of a rate increase to 70% at this week’s Fed meeting on the 16th. Friday’s August CPI sealed it at 3.4% YoY. Odds jumped to ~86–90%.

  • What the −0.8% hides: this was a narrow index loss over a much uglier big picture. Dow −1.6%, Russell 2000 −2.4%, Nasdaq only −0.7%. Rate-sensitive and small-cap names took the real hit while mega-cap tech cushioned the S&P. Equity funds saw $32.27 billion in outflows, the largest since December 2025 — positioning ahead of the Fed meeting, not panic.

How Our Picks Fared

Our past picks gained 0.7% versus the S&P 500 this week. There were no standout companies (ones that rose more than 10%), but there was a general gain from the tech sector with Amkor Technology (AMKR, +8.3%), Dell Technologies (DELL, +8.2%), IES Holdings (IESC, +7.2%), and Meta Platforms (META, +5.1%) gaining more than 5%.

Past Picks Review

No review this week — we’ll resume next week with the Insurance industry.

Have a great week!

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