Ignition Portfolio Update #3
Everything from last week.
Saturday, July 18, 2026 · Five trades this week.
Down 9.38%.
That’s the week. I’m putting the number in the second line of this letter instead of paragraph six, because how a writer handles his worst week tells you more than how he handles his best one, and this was the worst week the Ignition Portfolio has ever had. Thirteen of fifteen positions red. The year-to-date lead shortened from +89% to +71%.
A Chinese lab dropped a frontier-class model, a Chinese DRAM maker filed an $8.5 billion IPO, and the semiconductor index fell 10% into an official bear market, its worst week since April 2025. The selling didn’t stay in chips. It found my nuclear names, my space names, my ad-tech name. Correlation went to one, the way it always does right when you’d pay anything for it not to.
So I did the only thing my process allows in a week like this. I traded into it. Five trades. Two trims at the top of the week, three buys into the hole, two of which finished as the only green tiles on the heatmap. The market spent five days marking down everything I believe in, and I spent the same five days buying more of what it marked down hardest for the worst reasons.
Sixty points of lead on the S&P didn’t come from avoiding weeks like this. It came from what I do during them.
Before we continue:
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1. The Free View
15 positions, 8 themes. Two new names, one new sleeve. The tickers for Kraken and Adyen, again, cannot display real-time info because they are non-US companies.
Power & Generation GE Vernova ($GEV), Constellation Energy ($CEG)
AI Infrastructure Micron ($MU), Nebius ($NBIS)
Physical AI Nokia ($NOK), ($KRKNF) Kraken Robotics
Space & Defense ($KRMN) Karman S&D, ($RKLB) Rocket Lab
Nuclear & Materials ($CCJ) Cameco, ($UUUU) Energy Fuels, ($SMR) NuScale
Software & Ad-Tech ($APP) AppLovin
Fintech ($PGY) Pagaya, ($ADYEY) Adyen
Biotech ($RXRX) Recursion Bio
You’ll notice Kraken moved out of the space and defense sleeve. That’s not a demotion — it’s a promotion. Last week I told you Kraken was the opening move in physical AI, not the whole game. And Nokia joined it.
In addition, Constellation Energy joined the energy bucket, as it should. Grid infrastructure is key, but adding a position into the actual energy provider is what makes it whole. Especially one down almost 50% YTD with staggering upside.
2. Developments
The chip bear market arrived on schedule. Two weeks ago the semis shed a trillion and I called it a repricing fight. This week the repricing side won the round: the semiconductor index dropped almost 10% in five sessions and sits 20% below its record — the textbook definition of a bear market — with memory names breaking below their 50-day moving averages. The spark was a Chinese one: AI startup (why are we still calling these startups?) Moonshot released Kimi K3, a model competitive with the American frontier labs, and the market did the math on what cheap Chinese intelligence does to the justification for record American capex. Add a proposed $8.5 billion IPO from China’s CXMT — a direct DRAM competitor — plus chatter about new HBM export restrictions, and Micron fell 7% on Tuesday alone, breaking below the $900 level.
Here’s what didn’t change: Micron posted record quarterly revenue of $41.5 billion and guided to $50 billion next quarter. The earnings are still real. The trade is still crowded. Both things were true two weeks ago and both are true now — the difference is the market is finally pricing the crowding instead of the earnings. That process takes weeks, not days, which is why my base case for the semi sleeve over the near term is lower, and why the week’s trades took capital out of it. But I’m not exiting positions where the fundamentals are accelerating just because the multiple is deflating. Bearish on the next month. Bullish on the destination. Positioned for both.
The market told you where the power is. While chips bled, energy was the best sector of the week, up nearly 5%. Some of that is Iran and $82 oil. But look at what happened underneath: Constellation Energy cleared 18,875 megawatts in the PJM capacity auction for 2028–2029 — including 15,700 MW of nuclear — locking in revenue three years forward on Monday, took a strategic stake in nuclear developer Blue Energy on Thursday, and did all of it weeks after signing Walmart to a long-term nuclear power purchase agreement. The AI capex debate is a debate about chips. Nobody is debating whether the data centers already under construction will need electricity. That certainty gap is where I moved capital this week.
Iran, week two. CENTCOM hit Iranian targets for a seventh consecutive night, oil rose about 10% on the week, and this time the energy complex actually caught the bid that eluded it during the first round of strikes. The nuclear sleeve finally acted like what it is. Wars end; the structural power deficit doesn’t — and now I own the deficit at the utility layer too, not just the fuel layer.
The rotation kept rotating. Eight of eleven S&P sectors were green in a week when the headline tech sector fell 5.5%. Equal-weight beat cap-weight. Financials and industrials absorbed what chips gave up. Jobless claims fell to 208,000. This is not a scared market. It’s a market changing horses mid-race — and if you own the horse it’s changing to, weeks like this one are a gift. I’m not a swing trader, and my theses don’t change on the week, so I’m okay with not jumping horses for the time being, as I am confident my horse will win in the long run.
3. Portfolio
This is where the free view ends and the real value begins.
Upgrade and you get every weight, every cost basis, every all-time return, plus the five trades I made this week with the exact reasoning behind each one, the two new positions and how I sized them, my updated trim plan for the semi sleeve, and where I believe the second half’s opportunities are.
