No Investment Advice or Brokerage; Disclaimer. For the avoidance of doubt, The Simple Side does not provide investment, tax, or legal advice. The value of any asset class can go up or down and there can be a substantial risk that you lose money buying, selling, holding, or investing in any asset. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding assets is suitable for you in light of your financial condition.
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THE 2025 FLAGSHIP PORTFOLIO HAS ARRIVED
Since 2020 these picks have returned over 288%
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Past Performance of Weekly Trades
This section of the newsletter tracks the past performance of this weekly newsletter. As you will see, on average we have outperformed the S&P 500 from Monday to Friday, market open to market close.
The graph shows the growth of a $10K investment which began on July 20, 2024. You can find every newsletter dating back to July 20th here by CLICKING HERE.
Here is a summary of the past few weeks of performance and a comparison of returns that this newsletter has had relative to the SPY.
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Today’s Reporting Overview
Politician Trading Report
Politician Stock Highlight
Insider Trading Report
Insider Stock Highlight
Portfolio Updates
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Weekly Buy Opportunities
Includes take profit %’s
Mergers and Acquisitions
Top Investment Ideas
Micro-Cap Picks
Expected Stock Movements From Options Trading
Politician Trading Report
This report tracks the five most recent politician trades and two large holdings in my portfolio — ETFs NANC 0.00%↑ (which tracks democrat trading) and KRUZ 0.00%↑ (which tracks republican trading).
NANC is down 3.01% this week, 4.45% this past month, and 1.12% YTD.
KRUZ is down 2.25% this week, 4.55% this past month, and 0.89% YTD.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise as we saw politicians selling off their holdings in record numbers last week (right before the crash… not insider trading at all *wink*).
There were 8 active politicians over the past 30 days with 56 trades and a total trade volume of $1.35 million.
Politician Stock Highlight
Usually I would talk about a great stock that I think could be a buy here, but there was nothing super appealing. Last week I mentioned that politicians were signaling a major pullback in the market. In the 30 days prior to this weeks horrendous performance, we watched politicians sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock. While politician trades might not all be important, paying attention to their behavior as a whole can become extremely profitable.
This week I watched as politicians sold more. The largest trade this week came from Markwayne Mullin, who sold between 250K — 500K worth of an Invesco commodity ETF. This is just continued sentiment from last week. For this reason, we will not be recommending the ETFs as buys for this upcoming week.
Here are the most recent politician trades:
Insider Trading Report
This report tracks the five largest insider buys from the past week and a new ETF in my portfolio — ticker SURE — which tracks insider trading.
SURE is down 2.63% this week, 5.69% this month, and 1.42% YTD.
The monthly buy/sell ratio is 0.29 which is below the average of 0.40. This would indicate a slight sell in the markets.
Insider Stock Highlight
I don’t see anything that I really want to highlight or buy this week. The two largest insider trades this week totaled over $500 million while the top two largest buys totaled a whopping… make sure you are sitting down for this: $20 million dollars.
When there is so little conviction in the market picking a stock becomes more and more challenging. This week we saw buys on CVI and JELD topping the charts. Both stocks are sitting at or near their 52-week low.
Now, if you are thinking about buying one of these stocks anyway I would urge you to wait before doing so. The buyer for CVI was Carl Icahn whose 1-year portfolio performance is -36.29% — yikes. Turtle Creek Asset Mgmt has also underperformed over the past year.
Here are the largest trades from this past week:
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Portfolio Updates
Currently, our flagship fund is handily outperforming the SPY. Our current returns sit at +1.18% while the SPY remains stuck below 0 at -1.51%. We are only about a week into the trading year, so things are likely to change drastically. We have a few shinning stars that have helped us to start the year off so well.
I’ll share our current top pick FOR FREE now!
Our best performing holding is sitting at a crisp 7.62% this year and makes up around 5% of our total holdings: KLA Corp (ticker: KLA). KLA operates in the semiconductor space and handles chip manufacturers process control ($8.7 billion in revenue).
Now, ”chip manufacturer process control” sounds like a bunch of jargon and I hate jargon. The Simple Side of what KLA does is optimize the production of semiconductor chips.
These chips, as we all know, are only getting smaller. The race to make the most efficient chip in the smallest package has been going on for decades now. This is the reason why KLA is so valuable. As chips get smaller the manufacturing process get more precise which means there is more demand for KLA’s services.
KLA holds a strong position on my models rank structure with a 9.1/10. Its high rank is primarily driven by its high profitability and incredible growth score. The company operates with some of the most impressive margins I have ever seen.
Gross Margin
59.75%Operating Margin
37.6%Net Margin
28.92%
Now, there are other attractive features as well. For example, the company has been growing revenue by 17.4% for 3 years, has been growing EBITDA by 16% for 3 years and has been growing their cash flow by 21%.
As the markets get continually volatile and the economy starts to get unstable, companies with high cash flow and profitability like KLA will be able to make strategic investments to further increase the companies value.
Analysts expect the stock to continue its trajectory as they predict a 15.63% upside over the next year. A DCF of the company (a fancy valuation method) says the stock is at least 13% undervalued in the near term as well.
It is a great company that we are happy to have in our current portfolio!
Our current portfolio sits at a return of over 290% since the beginning of 2020.
Next Week’s Trades
Key Opportunities and Insights
The TLDR Summary
This is where I bring you a curated list of stocks my model says offer the best upside with the least potential for loss this week.
Each stock comes with a quick write-up after this summary so that you can make your own investing decisions. Of course, I will report on all of the stocks weekly, but that doesn’t mean you need to buy all of them or any of them every week. Do your own diligence, and you might just outperform me!
Quick PSA: We treat the trades as buys on Monday’s Market open and sells on Friday’s Market close. You pay for my research, my time, and most of all the saving of your time. That’s why we have a summary of everything below right here:
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