The Positioning — Newsflash #7 and 8

Week 7 & 8 | 29 March – 9 April 2026

A note on timing: Easter compressed weeks seven and eight into a single update. The numbers below cover two weeks of market movement. There is more to cover than usual.

eek 5 · 13–20 March 2026

Three portfolios. Same starting positions. Different decisions. Real money logic.

The Scoreboard

At the end of Week 6 all three portfolios were negative. The Strategist was at -1.86%, the Benchmark at -1.77%, the Algorithm at -1.63%. Two weeks later all three are meaningfully positive. That reversal needs context, because it didn’t happen because the thesis suddenly worked. It happened because the market snapped back sharply on Iran ceasefire signals, and everything moved together.

The Benchmark leads. Again. Six of eight weeks it has produced the best return. Eight weeks of active management have left the Strategist $460 behind doing nothing. Eight weeks of automated signal execution have left the Algorithm $246 behind. The gap is narrowing, but the direction hasn’t changed.

I’m documenting that honestly. It’s the only way this experiment has any value.

The Strategist dashboard as of 11 April. Eight weeks of live signals, market intelligence, macro drivers, central bank data, dark pool and whale activity, surfaced automatically. This is the intelligence layer the experiment runs on.

The Market These Two Weeks

The Iran conflict entered its seventh and eighth week. Oil spiked on Strait of Hormuz shipping disruption, fell sharply on ceasefire signals, then rose again when those signals proved fragile. Tech sold off hard on war uncertainty and tariff concerns, then staged a sharp relief rally when Trump announced a ceasefire. The Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Dow each touched correction territory before snapping back. US CPI for March came in at 3.3% annually. Consumer sentiment hit a record low.

These are not temporary readings. The macro environment this portfolio was built for persistent inflation, deteriorating fiscal positions, geopolitical instability, is not resolving. It is intensifying. The debasement thesis that brought gold miners, hard assets, and selective tech into this portfolio is not abstract anymore. It is the daily news cycle.

All three portfolios were caught in the crossfire. The recovery in the scoreboard reflects the ceasefire relief rally, not a fundamental change in the environment.

Eight weeks of portfolio performance. The thesis was tested hard in weeks five and six. The ceasefire rally brought everything back. TLX and AMD doing the work. NST still the drag.

NST — From Thesis to Evidence

In Newsflash #6 I said I was holding NST on thesis, not hope. Two weeks later, two things happened that matter.

First: Northern Star reported preliminary March quarter gold sales of 381,000 ounces, keeping it on track to meet its revised full-year production guidance of above 1.5 million ounces. The KCGM mill expansion remains on schedule for commissioning in early FY27. Second: the company announced a $500 million on-market share buyback, starting around 23 April, with management stating directly that they believe the current share price does not fully reflect the quality of their assets.

The stock recovered significantly from its March lows on the buyback announcement. NST is currently sitting at -16.71% from my blended average cost. Still deeply underwater. But management putting $500 million behind the proposition that NST is mispriced is a meaningful datapoint, not background noise.

The full March quarterly results drop 22 April. I will be watching closely.

I also need to record a trade honestly. On 1 April I sold 106 NST shares via rebalance at A$21.90. Not an exit from the thesis, a mechanical trim to bring the position back within allocation parameters after it had drifted on the back of my earlier adds. The position is smaller. The thesis is unchanged.

NST’s current signal picture — muted bearish, well off the deeply negative readings of weeks five and six. The last confluence alert was the original bullish ADD signal at inception. The platform is watching, not screaming. That’s a change from March.

The Benchmark holds NST at the original 185 shares. It has no mechanism to rebalance. That difference — between a managed position and a held one, will matter when NST either recovers or doesn’t.

TLX — The FDA Hands the Portfolio a Win

The standout event of these two weeks was not macro. It was company specific.

On 10 April, the FDA accepted Telix’s resubmitted New Drug Application for TLX101-Px, its brain cancer imaging agent Pixclara and assigned a PDUFA review date of 11 September 2026. The stock moved accordingly: up around 5–7% on the ASX and close to 10% in US overnight trading on the announcement.

This is acceptance, not approval. The FDA has agreed to review the resubmission. But Q1 2026 US dose volumes for existing commercial products rose 5% sequentially, full-year revenue guidance of $950–970 million was reaffirmed, and William Blair maintained their Outperform rating. The position is the portfolio’s strongest performer.

I also need to record a second TLX trim. On 1 April I trimmed a further 67.5 shares at A$13.81, TLX had risen enough to push the biotech/medtech bucket above its ceiling for the second time in a week. The platform flagged the allocation breach. I acted on it.

TLX — the portfolio’s strongest performer at +43.67%. Two allocation trims already executed. Still the largest single contributor to the Strategist’s positive return.

The Benchmark holds the original 806 shares and has not trimmed. If TLX continues to perform, the Benchmark will benefit more. That is the passive argument in its purest form.

The Algorithm — Steady

Since inception the Algorithm has executed nine trades. It is not over-trading. In a two-week period defined by daily reversals, the system did not panic, did not chase the ceasefire rally, and did not add to positions on noise.

The Algorithm trails the Benchmark by 24 basis points and the Strategist by 22. The gap versus the Benchmark is almost entirely explained by the CYL exit — the Benchmark held CYL through the stop-loss level because it had no instruction to sell. Whether that exit was correct depends entirely on what CYL does next.

The Strategist — Eighteen Trades and a Pattern

Since inception I have executed eighteen trades. The pattern that emerges when I look at that list honestly: I have been responsive to signals on the upside, trimming positions that have run, and on the downside, adding to positions that have fallen. But I have repeatedly dismissed CCJ DCA approaching signals without acting. Multiple times across weeks five through eight. I keep writing about this gap. The record keeps confirming it.

The Strategist trails the Benchmark. I am aware that the two-week recovery reflects market movement more than the quality of my decisions. I am documenting it honestly because the experiment requires it.

The complete recent trade record. NST and TLX trims on 1 April — mechanical rebalances, not thesis changes. AMD confluence add in late March. Every decision logged with timestamp and price.

What the Platform Actually Did These Two Weeks

This is the edition where I want to show the work, not describe it, show it.

Every number in this experiment comes from the platform. The NST convergence alerts that kept arriving each morning while I held through -36% unrealised loss. The TLX allocation breach that triggered two separate trims as the position outperformed. The AMD confluence signal the Algorithm and the Strategist both acted on. The CYL stop-loss that fired in March and protected the Algorithm from a position the Benchmark is still carrying.

Not one signal fabricated. Not one alert cherry-picked for this newsletter. Eight weeks of live production data, verifiable timestamps in the database, real money in real positions.

The Signal Alert Dispatcher — the full intelligence feed behind the experiment. Every alert logged, timestamped, and actioned or dismissed. 50 alerts in view. The ones marked Executed changed the portfolio. The ones marked Dismissed are the decisions I have to explain.

The platform doesn’t tell you what to do. It tells you what’s happening, consistently, persistently, in plain language, delivered to your inbox every morning. What you do with that intelligence is still your decision. But you make it with the same data institutional investors have been using for decades.

That is what StackMotive is built to change for retail investors.

The Letter, and What It Has to Do With All of This

Last week I published a letter addressed to myself — to the version of me from twenty years ago who was earning well, doing everything right by the rules he’d been given, and still finding that the number at the bottom of his bank statement barely moved.

The letter described the debasement mechanism, the Albany house that went from $150,000 to $1.1 million not because Albany got better but because the currency it’s priced in became worth less. It described the way the system redistributes wealth through inflation, and why following the rules your parents gave you about money leads to a slower and quieter version of falling behind.

That letter got more traction than anything else I’ve published. Which tells me something about how many people recognise themselves in it.

NST is in this portfolio because gold miners have historically preserved purchasing power when money supply expands. TLX is in this portfolio because the biotech sector, when it works, creates real value that isn’t denominated in currency debasement. The experiment is not just about whether active management beats passive. It is about whether a thesis-driven portfolio, built around a specific view of the monetary environment, produces better real returns over time.

The thesis has not been proven or disproven in eight weeks. But the environment it predicted is here. We are inside it.

If the letter resonated with you, if you recognised yourself in it, StackMotive is the next step. Not because I’m telling you it will solve the problem. But because the intelligence layer it provides is the one the letter said you were being denied.

www.stackmotiveapp.com

The Positioning tracks model portfolios for educational purposes. This is not financial advice. I hold positions in everything discussed here. All figures in USD at current exchange rates. Do your own research.