Portfolio Update: March 2026

Performance Review

The following is my active portfolio as of close on 4/2/2026:

Here is my portfolio underperformance at market close on 4/2/2026:

And alpha by active position at market close on 4/2/2026:

It was a terrible month for me and my stocks, most of which can be attributed to GLBE and PZZA. GLBE went from 0.77pps of alpha to -3.25pps of alpha. PZZA was closed shortly after my last writing as a -2.26pp detractor in alpha terms. A really unfortunate development, and it hurts to go from 8.79pps of portfolio level outperformance to 1.66pps of underperformance. GLBE moved against me with continued pressure on SaaS and it giving up some of its post-earnings gains. PZZA allegedly received a buyout offer from Irth Capital at ~$48 a share. It spiked to ~$39 a share, and I closed. It's since traded back down to $35 a share. I'm thinking about putting the short back on at some point, but I have a strong belief that this will get bought out some time in the near future. Too much PE dry powder and the franchise asset is very attractive to those guys. It's received two buyout offers in the last 6 months. I'm recalling my experience with Denny's where the business itself was getting worse and it still managed to fetch buyout offers. That will likely keep me sidelined.

The broader market was down this month with the conflict in Iran. Not sure I care very much about macro events like this, but really thought gold would serve as a better diversifier in a month like this. I think a lot of the fast money crowd has abandoned gold. This serves as the "catch-all" hedge in my portfolio as of now.

Notes from the Month

The broad theme from my notes this month is diversification and me wanting more of it.

Papa John's takeout offer, mentioned above, made me rethink idiosyncratic right-tail and left-tail events. I need to have enough active positions so events like this don't detract from portfolio performance at the level PZZA did. There was one single day, the day that PZZA received a takeout offer, where I lost 5pps of portfolio level outperformance. That's hard to stomach and probably doesn't happen if PZZA is a 5% weight instead of a 10% weight.

One of my notes reads "[t]here is nowhere to hide. You will die". Obviously untrue and very emotional, but there were a couple days there where it felt like my stocks literally couldn't go up and only energy was pushing the broader market higher. Another testament to diversification. If I was running 20 positions, I think I would've added an energy play last fall after listening to Dan Sundheim talk about Siemens.

This thought was accentuated by a conversation Ian Wright, the Silver Fund advisor and former employee of Blackrock's multi-asset team, had with our student investing fund. He said that outperformance can essentially be described by actual investing skill and the number of trades made. You (if you have genuine skill) should look to take as many positions as feasibly possible as long as the marginal position isn't dilutive to your knowledge of already held positions. This resonates with me.

The biggest limiting factor on my ability to diversify is time. I just don't have the time to sit down and diligence all the ideas that I want to. It's a terrible excuse, and I hate making it. I really wish it wasn't the case. I would say each name gets about ~10 hours of diligence minimum before making its way into the portfolio. That figure has a high standard deviation, but it represents that I don't add anything on a whim anymore. The downside here is that it's harder to build out a portfolio with the bar for addition being so high.

I've got some interesting ideas in the pipeline though. I'm wrapping up my training materials for both my internships this summer. I'll be receiving my JPM coverage group sometime in the next two weeks most likely. Once I've wrapped up training, I plan to do some work on my coverage group. Might publish some of this depending on how polished the work is. Otherwise, Western Union looks interesting to me. Debating trimming/selling Morningstar to make some room for it on the long side. Thanks for reading.