Two-Week Performance
Apologies for the missed issue last week — this one covers the two-week stretch since Issue #6, from the June 26 close through July 10. Over that span, the GVR portfolio gained +1.28%, modestly behind VOO's +1.89% and comfortably ahead of QQQ's +0.20%. After the sharp -4.71% drawdown documented in Issue #6, this was effectively a stabilization period — the portfolio mostly moved sideways with the broader market rather than making a decisive move in either direction.
On a year-to-date basis, GVR now stands at +37%, versus +18% for QQQ and +10% for VOO. The YTD lead over both benchmarks remains substantial, even with two consecutive weeks of the portfolio trailing VOO on a relative basis.
The Options Book: Two Positions, Offsetting Drift
The most notable feature of the last two weeks wasn't any single dramatic move — it was the way the two core options positions behaved in relation to each other. The NOW October 2026 $100 call has continued to drift upward off the low it hit before Friday June 26's ServiceNow spike, grinding higher in a steady, unspectacular way as the stock holds its gains. Meanwhile, the ONDS calls have drifted lower over the same period, giving back some of their prior strength as the position's underlying cooled off.
The net effect is that the two positions have largely offset one another at the portfolio level. This wasn't a designed hedge — the two theses are unrelated — but it's a useful real-world illustration of what happens when a book holds more than one options position with independent catalysts. When one is working and the other isn't, the portfolio-level volatility gets smoothed out, for better and for worse. It's worth watching whether this offsetting pattern continues or whether one thesis eventually pulls away from the other; for now, neither position has done anything to invalidate its original setup.
What Happened in Markets: June 29 – July 10
The period opened with the tail end of the tech-led rotation described in Issue #6 still working through the market. The holiday-shortened week into July 2 was a study in divergence: the Dow pushed to fresh all-time highs on strength in communication services and financials, while the Nasdaq continued to lag as investors booked profits in AI-linked semiconductor names that had run hard in the first half of the year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh helped calm nerves mid-week with comments suggesting inflation risks had eased substantially, and a softer-than-expected June jobs report — nonfarm payrolls came in well below consensus — reinforced the market's read that the Fed is in no hurry to resume hiking. Markets closed July 3 for the Independence Day holiday, capping a week in which the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq each posted solid gains of roughly 2%.
The second week opened with a bang: Monday, July 6 saw a broad rally as tech and chip stocks shook off their late-June malaise, with the Dow closing above 53,000 for the first time and the Nasdaq jumping over 1%. Anthropic's newly announced 20-year data center deal lifted infrastructure-adjacent names, and SpaceX officially joined the Nasdaq-100 following its record-setting IPO. That optimism proved short-lived — Tuesday brought a sharp reversal as the Strait of Hormuz situation escalated further, with the Treasury Department revoking a license permitting Iranian oil sales and the threat level to shipping in the strait raised to "severe" following renewed attacks on tankers. Oil jumped more than 5% on the news, and AI-linked chip names sold off again, dragging the Nasdaq down over 1% on the day.
The rest of the week saw chip stocks whipsaw between rally and rout ahead of a marquee event: South Korean memory giant SK Hynix's Nasdaq debut on Friday, which turned out to be the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company, raising over $26 billion and surging double digits on its first day of trading. Meta was the other standout story of the week, jumping roughly 6% on Friday alone after a bullish third-party report on its AI compute business, extending its weekly gain to nearly 15% — its best week since early 2024. The week closed on a broadly constructive note, with all three major indexes higher, even as futures markets continued to price meaningful odds of a Fed rate hike later this year and investors turned their attention to the start of bank earnings season the following week.
Taken together, the two weeks were a reminder that markets can chop sideways through a lot of noise — a weak jobs report, an escalating Middle East conflict, a record-breaking IPO, and a reignited AI trade — without resolving into a clear trend. For a portfolio like GVR's that's carrying both offsetting options exposure and a recently expanded equity book, that kind of consolidation isn't the worst outcome; it's a chance for new positions to season and for both options theses to keep working out their respective timelines without added pressure.