Better late than never ;)

I've been talking about investing for a while now, though it's been a while since I did my monthly stock picks.

I imagine knowing about specific opportunities and reasons to potentially buy or sell is valuable, but that value is limited because there isn't an operations component.

Today I'm adding the piece that ties it together: the model portfolio.

A model portfolio is a real, tracked set of positions — specific holdings, at specific weights, entered and exited at specific prices — maintained publicly over time as a single, continuous record.

Not a list of ideas. Not a batch of picks issued and forgotten.

One portfolio, priced and sized, that you can follow from the day a position opens to the day it closes.

Up to now, I've provided stock picks and theses in a "take them or leave them" fashion.

I've even gone back and graded them against the S&P 500 in retrospective pieces (and I'll keep doing that, because I think it's a fair way to keep score).

But if I'm honest, the whole exercise has been a little too general. It doesn't say when I got in, when I got out, or how big a bet I think the pick warrants.

And it should be noted that the sizing of bets is half the game. The same five stocks, held at two different sets of weights, produce two completely different return profiles.

In short: I'm preaching that I've been able to beat the S&P 500, but proof has been less than ideal.

The model portfolio is the fix for that. It's the full decision — entry, exit, and weight — in one place, updated as it happens, so you can actually see what I'm doing rather than just what I'm saying.

Going forward, I'll be reporting my investments in two different ways.

First is the weighted portfolio. I'll show what's in my portfolio, what percent of my portfolio it is, the cost basis, the current value, and the total return based on a hypothetical starting size of $10K. This will show what I'm invested in, how much, and why.

Second is the running ledger. I'll show each trade I made, the name, the day, the entry price, and the current value. This shows more on the timing and when I decide to double down or sell specific securities.

Finally, for each of the two sections, I'll provide a brief update and context.

And for both, I'm starting fresh. I'm not going to show my personal portfolio, just what I'm doing for this newsletter.

The Weighted Portfolio

(Total assumes cash held flat at $9,740 — 97.4% of $10,000 — with no yield applied. CRM and LEN dollar figures are their weight applied to the $10K pool, marked to the current value shown above.)

CRM (Salesforce) — I've mentioned the thesis in the last edition. I was going to pile in if the price dropped below $145, but it hovered at $150 then shot up on a rerating from Guggenheim. That's the problem with hard thresholds — you can watch a name run without you and second-guess the discipline that's supposed to be the whole point. The next catalyst is the earnings call in September, and there's a lot that can happen between now and then.

LEN (Lennar) — I'd like to dedicate a whole edition to this thesis in the future. For now, all I'll say is that it's at a cyclical bottom, plus pent-up demand, plus a business model transformation that — if successfully pulled off — will increase its P/E multiple. However, the whole thesis requires interest rates to go down, and based on current talk, that might not happen for a while. So I’m happy to just sit on it and preserve optionality.

Why CRM and LEN currently sit at small size: not out of hesitation — I sized both intentionally small for two reasons. First, I expect better entry points before adding further to either name. Second, I was keeping capital available rather than deploying it all at once. A real position, however small, forces me to actually track a name rather than just watch it from the sidelines — that's the point of the toe-in. Skin in the game.

The Ledger

This is the factual record — timing and price, nothing else. If I add to a position later, that's a new line, not an edit to an old one — this ledger only grows.

Every future "model portfolio" edition will carry both sections: the running ledger, updated with any new entries or exits, and the weighted portfolio, re-weighted if the logic calls for it. New editions get triggered by new entries, exits, or a thesis break on something already in the ledger — not on a fixed calendar. If nothing's changed, there's nothing to report.

Next up: the 52-week low screen that's been quietly running in the background that led me to find Lennar.