Weekly Performance
With markets closed Monday for Memorial Day, this was a four-day trading week — and the GVR portfolio made the most of it. The portfolio gained +18.78% across Tuesday through Friday, compared to +1.42% for VOO (S&P 500) and +2.94% for QQQ (Nasdaq-100). The outperformance this week was not driven by the equity book — it was driven by a single high-conviction options position that has been building for weeks and finally broke out in a major way.
What Happened in Markets This Week
It was a strong week for equities broadly, with all three major indexes closing at fresh all-time highs on Friday. The S&P 500 notched its ninth consecutive weekly advance — its longest winning streak since 2023 — capping a May that will be remembered as one of the best months of the year for technology stocks. The Nasdaq Composite settled at 26,972, the S&P 500 at 7,580, and the Dow cleared 51,000 for the first time.
The macro backdrop was dominated by two competing narratives: the ongoing U.S.-Iran tensions that have kept oil prices elevated throughout the month, and a continued blowout earnings season that gave the market reasons to look past the geopolitical noise. On Thursday, the PCE inflation reading came in at its highest level in nearly three years, which briefly rattled sentiment — but the market absorbed it and pushed to new highs anyway, a sign of underlying bull market strength. By Friday, President Trump indicated he would be making a "final determination" on a preliminary Iran ceasefire extension, with oil pulling back sharply on the news and providing additional tailwind for equities into the close.
The technology sector was the clear standout. Dell Technologies surged nearly 33% on Friday alone — its best single day on record — after reporting a Q1 beat on both revenue and earnings and raising full-year guidance, with AI server demand cited as the primary driver. Micron added another 5% on the day, extending what has been a remarkable month-long run for the semiconductor complex. The XLK technology ETF hit a new 52-week high. The AI infrastructure trade that has been the engine of this rally showed no signs of exhaustion heading into June.
The NOW Call Comes to Life
The biggest story in the GVR portfolio this week was the ServiceNow October 2026 $100 call, which has been the portfolio's highest-conviction position since it was entered in mid-April. The thesis — built on a contrarian read that ServiceNow is an AI beneficiary rather than an AI disruption victim — has been playing out steadily since entry. But this week, the position broke out in a material way, becoming the single largest position in the portfolio at over 20% of total account value, and contributing the majority of the week's outsized gains.
The broader software sector re-rating that was always at the core of the NOW thesis is accelerating. The market is increasingly recognizing that enterprise SaaS companies with deep workflow integrations, sticky recurring revenue, and credible AI monetization stories are not going to be replaced by large language models — they are going to be the layer on top of them. ServiceNow's $12.64 billion in contracted future revenue, its 22%+ subscription revenue growth, and its expanding agentic AI customer base are all being repriced toward more appropriate multiples. With the October 2026 expiration still months away, there is no reason to take chips off the table. The thesis is intact, the technicals are constructive, and the fundamental re-rating has meaningful room to run toward the analyst bull-case target of $234.
The ONDS December 2026 $9 call also contributed positively this week, benefiting from the broader risk-on environment and continued momentum in the autonomous systems and drone infrastructure trade. Like the NOW position, the ONDS contract has a long runway before expiration — December 2026 — which means there is no urgency to manage the position aggressively. The operational story at Ondas continues to develop, and the position will be held as long as the thesis remains intact and the time value works in our favor.
Both options positions represent the portfolio's most concentrated, highest-risk bets — and weeks like this one are exactly why those bets were sized the way they were. When the research is right and the thesis plays out, options leverage turns a strong week into an exceptional one.