2026 Q2 PM Note

Q2 was the first quarter of the public portfolio record. Inception date was May 1st, and throughout the month of May, there was a lot of prompting with Codex to sort out bugs in private dashboard and the public website and performance reports. In total this project took roughly ~150 hours to launch. I started formally mid April after finishing finance degree at Okanagan College.

Initial verdict

So far, after just being operational in May and June 2026, I do not think the active trading was clearly worth it versus just holding the benchmark. But there is a lot of important context that makes this judgment unclear.

1. This is all the capital I have available to me and represents net worth… and so beating a straight S&P500TR benchmark is quite ambitious. For example if this portfolio was only 10% of my available capital, then beating the benchmark would almost be setting the bar too low. The size of the portfolio relative to total net worth is the largest contextual factor for risk/return analysis.
2. The fixed allocation framework only started on June 10. Before that, May and early June were a mix of portfolio setup, trade experiments, options activity, and figuring out how strict the reporting system needed to be. That is not an excuse. It just means the quarter is more useful as a baseline than as proof of skill.

The public record now exists. Monthly PDFs exist. The source trail exists on github for monthly PDFs, along with youtube video publications. The portfolio has an automated performance path, benchmark comparison, attribution, drawdown, and risk dashboard. The work I am putting out now is not going to disappear when the winds change direction. If I claim that ‘active management’ is worth the extra complexity, the record has to show it over time.

Main drivers

During May and June here were the main drivers:

• IBIT hurt. It was weak relative to SPY and GLD during the period, but some trading problems also made the situation worse. In general before I even started this i have noticed that trading IBIT and GLD is where i make mistakes, and sticking to equities for satellite trading has been more productive. As a compromise I assign 20% exposure to IBIT and GLD for the exposure and to eliminate the temptation express active trades on them.
• Satellite option trades helped. There were gains in event-volatility and single-name option setups. Some of that may be skill, but I do not want to overclaim it. There was no real market tail event in May or June. Selling options looks smarter when nothing breaks. That is something i need to be more sensitive to going forward. It would be embarrasing now that my performance is public, and it’s an easy mistake to make.
• USD strength helped. The USD-to-CAD move of nearly 4.5% from beginning of May to end of June was a tailwind for the CAD reporting return. It almost felt like cheating since it has nothing to do with investment skill, other than the decision to only allocate in USD securities.

Mistakes

What I have learned from the mistakes is more valuable than the positive returns.

The trade count was too high. More trades mean more commissions, more tax friction, more chances to make a bad decision, and more mental load. If the system needs constant touching to work, it may not be a system.

I also relied too much on theta. Premium selling can make the portfolio look productive day to day, but it can hide the real question: what happens when the entire market has a 20% move?

The worst version of that was opening inefficient unlimited-risk option structures. That is the kind of thing that can look fine initially and then become obviously stupid all at once. I do not want the public record to become a diary of picking up nickels while risking the bag.

Q3 work

Looking ahead into Q3, the work I have to do is in risk management, and downside protection.

I need a strategy for how to hedge when I think downside is imminent without selling the core portfolio. Buying protection is expensive. Selling puts increases returns until it does not. There may not be one perfect answer, but the current process needs a clearer default.

I also need to test whether the risk framework is too loose, but before that I need to achieve the monthly goal of having breach days under 10. May and June have me nowhere close to that so far. I may reduce my breach-days going forward but I could still be carrying too much short option exposure at any given time. I am guessing the limits of my risk framework will need to get tighter soon.

Open question

This is the main open question of these quarterly notes: can this process beat the benchmark after tax, costs, risk, and attention?

Q2 does not answer that. It mostly shows the record is live, the measurement is getting stricter, and the first version of the trading process had too much activity and too much hidden tail risk.

That is a decent place to start but not a time to celebrate yet and share screenshots to all my friends.

THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. This is my own portfolio and my own process, published for accountability and review.