Still Beating the S&P 500

Introduction

Welcome back. Just as I was preparing to write a newsletter about how my positions were faring earlier this week, August happens. Just like it has for the past few years, the month started like a crack-head (or a meth-head, if you prefer) going through withdrawal.

Many of my positions were starting to soften, and I was thinking about doing some rotation, but Friday, 8/1/2025 made sure that I made profit-taking a priority. In total, I exited 20 positions with the expectation that this time of year will again prove to be a bad time to hold stocks.

Still Beating the S&P 500

There were some positions that had been killing it, like $WLDN and $TMC, but the stocks I filter for, even though they can outperform for few months, they sometimes crash and burn, hard, like $BYRN, $AEVA, $TSSI, and $SEZL. Each of which I was in early enough to catch the rocket ride up and exited before gravity took hold. 

I’m still holding 3 small positions, but I think this exodus was large enough for me to do a wider review of the “100 Bagger” strategy.

Results ( Not including 3 small positions that  I’m still holding)

• Up 11.2% since 5/22

• $SPY up 5.66%

• That’s a beat even accounting for a 40% tax rate and 0.25% fees

• 25 out of 36 position winners (69.4%)

• 19 out of 29 winning tickers (65.5%)

• 11 out of 36 losing positions (including $TSLA, which was not part of the 100 bagger strategy)

• 7 of the losers were actually big winners at one time, but reversed hard - by 30% or more. 

Big Gainers

The following tickers are among the biggest movers of all the stocks I held over the past few months. This table isn’t showing my best performers (you can see that in the image above). It shows the stocks that had the biggest moves while I was holding them.

The “max gain %” column is how much the stock went up while I was holding it. The “exit %” columns shows my return. And, the “max to exit drop %” column shows how much of a drop occured from that maximum gain until I was able to exit.

It really illustrates the illusion of how much more impact a drop has on a given position. It also shows that I picked a lot of winners.

Conclusions

What originally gave me confidence that this “100 Bagger” approach (See Beating the S&P 500) might work was that when I was experimenting with it earlier this year, while $SPY was choking in April, the strategy performed about the same as the greater market during the down period, but outperformed significantly afterwards. 

Because my results show that about 70% of my positions have been winners, I’m a little more confident in using larger position sizes with fewer positions based on stocks that have either been in my 100 bagger filter and have shown success, have just entered the filter, or have shown up in the filter and have sustained a higher quarter-over-quarter ROE with lower float (outstanding shares).

In hindsight, exiting high performing plays when structure is broken with a big single day, or accelerating intraday move,  of roughly 5% or more seems to be a pretty reliable exit strategy. The only equity that seems to be trying to make a recovery after breaking structure is $TSSI, and it still doesn’t look stable. So, I’m generally happy with my exits. I just should have exited sooner. 

Weekly Stock Picks: $HWM, $AMSC, $RBC, $TDUP 

$HWM was a pick last week, but suffered a big 1-day setback. But, like the champ it’s been for the past umpteen years, it just bounced of the 50 simple moving average (SMA) like it’s been doing for the past 2 years. This also coincides with a bounce off of the top of its 2 year old Magic Linear Regression Channel [MW]. And, there is no overhead resistance to be seen.

$AMSC had a post-earnings pop late last week, and seemed largely unaffected by the drop in the overall market. Return on Equity (ROE) and Earnings Per Share (EPS) have been consistently up every quarter for the past 2 years. EVERY QUARTER! For both ROE and EPS. It may need a little breather, but it definitely looks like a good long-term hold.

$RBC is a position I exited Friday, but am looking to get back into. When everything was crashing on Friday, $RBC said “Hold My Beer”. It used its 50 SMA as a starting block, then jumped to new highs before settling for a 2.78% gain on the day. ROE and EPS both are on an uptrend and the 50, 200, and 300 SMAs, like the previous 2 stocks, continue to be stacked and pointed up and to the left. And, there is no overhead resistance.

$TDUP has an earnings event after hours on Monday, August 4th - tomorrow. On a fundamental note, earlier this year they exited the European market and have gotten a big growth benefit from some of the AI tools, like Style Chat, that they’ve introduced to their ecommerce platform. EPS and ROE have gained in the last quarter, but there is some overhead resistance. This is a slightly riskier play, but could be a big winner if they stay on their current trajectory. Oh, and they’ve been winning a lot of awards and recognition on the technology front, including a nod for their Chief Product and Technology Officer, Dan DeMeyer, being named a 2024 Vanguard at the beginning of the year, by Modern Retail

And, a few more…

It’s hard to know who will come out on top, but there were a lot of great stocks that fell to resistance levels on Friday, like $CHCO, $SAPGF, $NEXN, $FFH, $DOCU, and $RBLX, but have some solid charts. If those levels don’t break, these each have some powerful upsides.

There are also a few that just won’t go down. $DCO and $HWKN seem to have turned the market dip into a hiccup. $MCRI and $RDDT (as well as $AMSC) have all ripped after earnings beats, but now seem to be taking a breather. I’ll keep an eye on them. 

Spreadsheet Improvements

In dealing with the mass sell-off, I realized that I was not looking forward to entering my sold positions into the PositionSizeCalculator.net Companion Spreadsheet. So, I improved it. Now, you can migrate your active positions on the “All Entries” worksheet to the “Sold” worksheet in bulk. 

What would have taken me an hour on Thursday took about 5 minutes yesterday. Just enter a comma-delimited list of the row number of the position, then enter the exit price. That’s it! The symbol, entry date, position size, and pretty much everything else gets automatically added, and the new totals get calculated. 

The exit date uses the current day by default, making same day entries even faster. You can also change the number of shares for partial exits, but the default will be the current number of shares held - again, streamlining the process. 

If you have a faster way to track trade performance across multiple accounts and multiple brokerages, let me know.

More Resources

Free tools that you can use today to improve your trading

• Position Size Calculator - Companion Spreadsheet - $19.95

• Magic Watchlist Google Chrome Extension - FREE

• Position Size Calculator - FREE

Free TradingView indicators you can use right now in your account. Don’t have a TradingView account. Click this link to get one.

• Magic Order Blocks [MW] - FREE

• QQQ and SPY Price Levels [MW] - FREE

• Magic Linear Regression Channel [MW] - FREE

• ATR Bands (Keltner Channel), Wick and SRSI Signals [MW] - FREE

• Bollinger Band Wick and SRSI Signals [MW] - FREE

• Price and Volume Stochastic Divergence [MW] - FREE

• Multi VWAP from Gaps [MW] - FREE

• Multi VWAP [MW] - FREE

• MW Volume Impulse - FREE

Other cool tools

• HigherHighs.com

• GetPineScript.com 

The End

If you like this newsletter, let me know, and please share. If you don’t like it, please tell me why, and I’ll do my best to make it better. And remembre, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Reddit, X.com, TradingView, or Youtube. If for some reason you forget, you can always get those details from the footer at mwright.com