Well, what did you think “Top of Range” meant?
This was the S&P 500 chart from our Jan Portfolio Review(on the 13th) when I said:
“Last month, the S&P 500 was at 6,800 on the nose and, since our Dec 17th Review, we are up 177 points (2.6%) – just 23 points from 7,000 which is, unfortunately, the top of our predicted range for the S&P 500 for 2025 and, so far, we have not seen any good reasons to raise our levels for 2026. Of course, Q1 earnings start this week so maybe they’ll be better than we expect and also – there’s nothing unusual about overshooting the range by a segment (200 points in this case) or even two – so we could keep going – but a retrace is more likely. “
We doubled our hedges and covered our positions and, of course, we focused our short plays on the 40x earnings, overbought Nasdaq 100 for ALL the obvious reasons I’ve been talking about since we built our new Watch List (s) at Thanksgiving. In fact, our Trade of the Year for 2026 is Pfizer (PFE) – a safety stock!
Not only are we re-testing 6,800 on the S&P 500 this week but also the dreaded 600 level on QQQ, the ETF for the Nasdaq 100, which failed it’s critical 25,000 line for the 2nd time this month and now, with the SPX, threatens to crack back towards the Strong Retrace line – another 5% drop from here!
Nonetheless, at the moment, we’re looking at this as more of a buying opportunity for our Watch List candidates – as well as our Top 20 List and our Bonus 10 List picks and now Anya has given us 9 more stocks in yesterday’s “🏰 The AGI Round Table: Mid-Month State of the Union – Day 47 of 2026.“
That’s because, although the market is clearly overbought – not everything is and a lot of stocks are being sold off over FEARS that AI will hurt their business but it’s not going to happen this year, or next year most likely. And really, are you going to say Saleforce (CRM, for example) should have dropped 30% this year to trade now at 14 times earnings with $5Bn in the bank and $1Bn PER MONTH in profits pouring in?
NOT to do a commercial for Salesforce but it’s not just a contact list. Salesforce sits at the center of Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, and Analytics for big enterprises: it’s the place where customer, deal, case, and campaign data actually live and where the workflows run. For big regulated customers (Banks, Insurers, Healthcare, Public Sector), a huge part of the value is the shared security/governance model: roles, audit trails, data residency, privacy controls, etc. You can’t just bolt a random open‑source AI agent onto that and call it a day!
CRM may use AI to drastically improve their own business and they don’t need to spend $100Bn building their own data centers to do that – they can just pay $20/month like the rest of us… The real risk for Salesforce is seat counts – which will drop off as human employees are replaced by AI but then the AI will need to use Saleforce too – so maybe a brand new customer base? The company has already rolled out “Agentforce” for AI hires to use – making them MORE valuable for companies looking to cull their humans.
Again, not a commercial – just an example of how SOME software companies are IMPROVING their offerings with AI and you can’t have you corporate AI do all these things – they simply don’t have that kind of capacity – yet.
This is what we call “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and there are a lot of wet babies that traders have tossed away this month so there’s a lot of opportunities to go shopping but, FIRST, we need to attend to our own house – which brings us to this month’s portfolio review:
Money Talk Portfolio Review: We can only adjust this portfolio on Bloomberg’s Money Talk show and I was last on on Dec 16th (way back in 2025) and last month we were at $397,249, which was up 297% since we began this “new” portfolio with $100,000 on Aug 21st, 2024 (the previous one hit $1M so we started a new one). I’ll be back on the show March 18th and we will likely make some changes then.
Fortunately, as we try to pick “bulletproof” trades that can survive quarter to quarter – we stayed away from overpriced tech and, as of this morning, the MTP is at $424,933 (up 324%), a lovely gain of $27,684 (6.9%) despite the indexes dropping 2.8%. Not bad for a portfolio where we didn’t change a thing. How? By BEING the HOUSE and letting time (theta decay) do the work for us!
Based on the current status of the Money Talk Portfolio as of February 13, 2026, here is the updated summary for this month:
Money Talk Portfolio Status (February 2026)
| Symbol | Key Long Spread | Total Position P/L | Status |
| AMAT | 2028 $270/220 spread | +$31,171 | Existing |
| ARCB | 2026 $85/70 spread | +$9,405 | Existing |
| B | 2028 $47/37 spread | +$1,638 | Existing |
| BCS | 2028 $25/18 spread | +$6,030 | Existing |
| ET | 2028 $17/13 spread | +$11,615 | Existing |
| IVZ | 2028 $25/20 spread | +$6,625 | Existing |
| LMT | 2028 $500/450 spread | +$24,836 | Existing |
| MU | 2028 $250/200 spread | +$8,402 | Existing |
| OZK | 2028 $55/30 spread | +$31,100 | Existing |
| PFE | 2028 $32/25 spread | +$5,925 | Existing |
| PPL | 2028 $40/30 spread | +$3,963 | Existing |
| SLB | 2028 $42.5/30 spread | +$3,595 | Existing |
| SYF | Short Put/Call Structure | +$13,225 | Existing |
| TGT | 2028 $115/85 spread | +$32,448 | Existing |
| WHR | 2028 $90/60 spread | +$18,455 | Existing |
| XOM | 2028 $120/100 spread | +$12,738 | Existing |
| Total | +$221,176 |
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Portfolio Value: The total Security Value is currently $141,043, with $283,890 Cash on Hand, for a Total Portfolio Value of $424,933 (a 324.9% return on the $100,000 starting basis).
And here is our Chief Analyst, Boaty McBoatface’s overview of these positions:
🚢 Structurally, the Money Talk Portfolio is still lined up with what we just laid out in the AGI Round Table piece: long the physical/infra side of the Matrix Economy, plus some conservative financials and defensives. The “red flags” are mostly about sizing and concentration, not “wrong universe.”
Here’s a quick pass, name by name, through the AGI/sector lens:
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AMAT, MU – These are core “Builders,” not middlemen: they sell the tools and memory the AI grid physically needs. They’re volatile, but thematically exactly where you want to be. No red flag other than: don’t let combined semi/capex exposure (AMAT+MU+LMT’s defense electronics) get so big that one down‑cycle wrecks the portfolio.[philstockworld]
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SLB, XOM, ET, PPL – Real‑world energy and utilities: they sit on the physical wall that has to power and cool all this AI, and also heats homes, runs trucks, etc. Oil services (SLB) and XOM/ET are cyclical and exposed to policy/ESG swings, but they’re not being structurally obsoleted by AGI; the risk is more “recession / oil down / political” than “middleman extinction.” PPL is a boring regulated utility; that’s ballast, not a red flag.[philstockworld]
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LMT – Defense prime. In a world with more AI, more geopolitical friction, and more drone/space/defense spending, this is about as far from “middleman” as you get. The main risks are defense budgets and program execution, not AGI eating the business.
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OZK, BCS, IVZ, SYF, PFE – This is your “financial/health” sleeve.
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OZK (bank) and BCS (Barclays) are old‑economy lenders/capital‑markets shops. They’re exposed to credit cycles and regulation, but they’re not obvious direct AI losers in the next 2–3 years; if anything, they benefit from being systemically important and slow to be disintermediated.
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IVZ (Invesco) and SYF (Synchrony) are the ones to watch:
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Asset managers like IVZ can absolutely be squeezed by AI‑driven fee compression, DIY robo, and low‑cost factor stuff. That said, IVZ is already derated and pays you while you wait; near‑term it’s more about markets and flows than sudden AGI obliteration.
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SYF is a high‑yield credit/consumer lender tied into the “week of the consumer” theme. It’s cheap and profitable, but it sits in the crosshairs of: consumer stress, AI‑driven underwriting competition, and potential political crackdowns on rates/fees. I wouldn’t call it a sell, but I’d flag it as a higher‑risk financial where you want to keep position size modest and watch credit metrics carefully.finance.yahoo+2
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PFE – Big Pharma, already beaten down. Whatever AI does for drug discovery, Pfizer’s risk is pipeline/pricing, not agents deleting “seats.” It actually fits the “physical wall” side more than the Matrix side: people still need meds.
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TGT, WHR – These are physical‑economy consumer names.
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TGT – Core U.S. retail footprint, tied directly to real‑world consumer spending. E‑commerce/AI changes how they operate, not whether people buy food and household goods. The main risk is a deeper consumer recession, not AGI killing the model.
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WHR – Big‑ticket appliances, very tied to housing turnover and remodeling. It’s more cyclical than “dangerous”: if housing stays frozen, you can see pressure, but AI does not directly remove the need for washing machines and refrigerators. If anything, more smart‑appliance penetration is a mild tailwind.
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ARCB – Trucking / logistics carrier. This sector is being repriced because markets are trying to figure out who wins in AI‑optimized supply chains (we called out CHRW/LSTR in the Round Table note). ArcBest is an operator of trucks and logistics services; AI/agents will change routing, pricing, and efficiency, but the physical layer is still trucks, terminals, and drivers. So again, cyclical risk yes, “pure middleman that vanishes” no.[philstockworld]
- Barrick Gold (B) – Tier‑one gold producer with large, long‑life assets. Gold is about real yields, FX, and risk sentiment, not about AI seat counts; if anything, a more unstable AI/Matrix economy with higher perceived tail risk is supportive for gold miners over time.
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Net from the AGI/Matrix‑Economy perspective:
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We are very light on pure SaaS/middlemen and heavy on builders and physical‑world cash flow, which is exactly the tilt we’ve been advocating since last summer.[philstockworld]
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The main watch‑list names are IVZ and SYF (financials business models that can be squeezed by AI‑driven competition and regulation) and WHR/ARCB from a cyclical demand standpoint (housing and freight). None of them are “must‑sell now,” but those are where I’d monitor fundamentals and be ready to cut or trim if credit or demand data really roll over.
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The Money Talk Portfolio is heavily tilted to hard assets and real‑world cash flows (energy, mining, defense, utilities, appliances, trucking, banks) plus a few more AI‑sensitive financials.
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The only real AGI‑era “yellow flags” are IVZ and SYF, where long‑term business models can be pressured by AI‑driven fee compression, competition, and regulation, and WHR/ARCB from a cyclical demand standpoint.
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There are no obvious “AI middleman” landmines like pure‑play SaaS/office‑worker leverage inside this portfolio; most of these names either build the grid, power the grid, or sell things humans still need in any plausible Matrix scenario.
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$700/Month Portfolio Review: We just did the update on Feb 3rd and no changes since then. What we did do at S&P 7,000 was pull a lot of CASH!!! off the table and COVER!!! our remaining positions to insure the next pullback didn’t reverse our gains – AND IT DID NOT! In fact, we’re now at $105,549 (up 259%) with a LOVELY $12,353 (13.2%) gain WHILE THE MARKET FELL!
So, if you want a masterclass in locking in gains – check our or $700/Month Portfolio Review from 2 weeks ago… 😉
$700 Per Month Portfolio Status (February 2026)
| Symbol | Key Long Spread | Total Position P/L | Status |
| AAL | 2028 $12/17 spread | +$223.00 | Existing |
| ARCC | 2028 $20/25 spread | +$151.00 | Existing |
| B | 2028 $32/40 spread | +$2,059.00 | Existing |
| EPD | 2027 $30/35 spread | +$2,605.00 | Existing |
| ET | 2028 $15/17 spread | +$330.00 | Existing |
| F | 2028 $10/11.85 spread | +$353.00 | Existing |
| GEO | 2028 $15/22 spread | -$190.00 | Existing |
| HELE | 2027 $15/22.50 spread | -$200.00 | Existing |
| HPQ | 2028 $18/23 spread | -$220.00 | Existing |
| HRB | 2026 $45/50 spread | -$2,365.00 | Existing |
| NVO | 2027 $55/70 spread | -$1,679.00 | Existing |
| PATH | 2027 $10/15 spread | -$505.00 | Existing |
| PR | 2028 $10/15 spread | +$195.00 | Existing |
| SAIL | 2026 $15/22.50 spread | +$2,625.00 | Existing |
| SOFI | 2028 $20/22 spread | -$320.00 | Existing |
| SQQQ | 2028 $70/115 spread | +$1,157.00 | Existing |
| ULCC | 2026 $4/5 spread | +$451.00 | Existing |
| UUUU | 2028 $15/25 spread | -$12,150.00 | Existing |
| VFC | 2028 $15/25 spread | +$225.00 | New |
| Total | -$7,255.00 |
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UUUU: The significant negative P/L is primarily driven by the deep-in-the-money Short Calls (2027 $10) which currently show a large unrealized loss.
That “unrealized loss” is protecting our gains in UUUU and, at the moment, it would cost us $6,000 to roll them to a fully covered 2028 $40,000 spread ($15/25) and, since that spread is currently showing net $3,750 – despite being $20,000 in the money – I’ll have to say I’m not worried AT ALL!
Short-Term Portfolio (STP) Review: The STP holds our hedges but, so far, we haven’t suffered any damage to our small portfolios. We looked over the STP in Friday’s Live Member Chat Room at 11am (you can JOIN HERE if you’d like to get live updates) and decided we didn’t need to adjust and we gained $13,000 during the day – now $479,356, which is up 139.7%, which is FANTASTIC for a bearish portfolio in an epic bull market (we began with $200,000 on June 4th of last year.
That’s because we hedge our hedges for income and also because we use these market channel gyrations to adjust our bets along the way. As I said on Friday, the first adjustment we will make (if the above chart levels fail) would be to buy back the short SQQQQ March calls to make us more bearish. Stay tuned to see if it’s needed:
IFF, on the other hand, the lines do hold – then Boaty gave us a shopping list on Friday to add some short put sales for some additional income (if the market goes higher). We always like to go shopping when the VIX is high and, this morning – we’re at 22.41!
IN PROGRESS
