Week 4 Recap: The Streak Ends, Loudly

Well, that was not fun. After three weeks of quietly outpacing the S&P 500, the portfolios decided this was the week to remind me that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All four were down, and all four were down worse than the market.

Monday started out promising. Tuesday was fine. Wednesday was fine. Then Thursday showed up and flattened everybody. The S&P 500 was down 1.79%, the portfolios were down 4-6%, and there was not much I could do about it besides stare at my dashboard.

Week 4 Performance

Dates	S&P 500	Ensemble	Growth Eval	ML Model #1	ML Model #2
Week 4 (3/23 – 3/27)	-2.23%	-5.19%	-4.93%	-5.10%	-5.46%

Daily Breakdown

Date	S&P 500	Ensemble	Growth Eval	ML Model #1	ML Model #2
3/23	+1.05%	+1.77%	+1.35%	+1.61%	+1.63%
3/24	-0.34%	-0.83%	-0.83%	-0.22%	+0.88%
3/25	+0.56%	+0.14%	+0.43%	-0.07%	-0.77%
3/26	-1.79%	-4.90%	-4.61%	-5.23%	-6.39%
3/27	-1.71%	-1.37%	-1.27%	-1.19%	-0.81%

Cumulative Since Launch (3/2)

	S&P 500	Ensemble	Growth Eval	ML Model #1	ML Model #2
Total	-6.57%	-6.88%	-5.92%	-6.48%	-3.81%

ML Model #2, which was my shining +1.83% example last week, is now sitting at -3.81%. Still better than the S&P 500, but I'll admit I liked the positive number more. That is how this works though, you ride a name like The Trade Desk up, and you ride it back down too.

What triggered Thursday? A little bit of everything, really. More Middle East headlines, more tariff uncertainty, and the ongoing debate about when (or if) the Fed cuts. The portfolios hold higher-beta growth names than the index, so when the market sneezes, they tend to catch a cold.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that every portfolio is still ahead of the S&P 500 since launch. The bad news is that "ahead of the S&P 500" currently means "less negative than the S&P 500." I will take the win where I can find it.

Thanks for reading!