Apple Crushed By Tariff News, But My Weekly Picks Remain Strong (+36% YTD)

I have a new section added this week: a quick interesting stock pick that has potential to make some solid returns.

To Simple Side Shareholders — good morning! I am glad to have you join me for another Saturday Sendout.

If you are new here or unfamiliar with our content, you can see the layout of everything below!

• SATURDAY [free]

  • Market Commentary

    • Weekly Picks Performance

    • An Interesting Trade Idea *NEW*

  • Total Portfolio Performance

• SATURDAY [paid]

  • Our Weekly Picks

    • Mergers & Acquisitions Picks

    • Top Stock Picks

  • Micro Cap Stock Picks

  • Earnings & Options

I want your opinions on the new format going forward. Let me know what you think by responding to this email or clicking the button below!

Request From Last Week

I noticed that someone requested “A portfolio page with the buy price, ticker symbol, the current price, this week's percent gain or loss.”

Believe it or not, we have already created this for paying subscribers! You can request access here (LINK), and if you are a paying subscriber (a shareholder), then you will be given access!

---

The Saturday Sendout (commentary)

More news this week sent the markets back down from their “recovered” levels just 2 weeks ago. The SPY ended down 1.53% this week on news from Trump that tariffs aren’t over quite yet.

The threat this week was a 50% tariff on the EU and a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the sweet sweet USA! So… the question has now become, “Will Trump keep true to his threat?”

While you could argue that we won’t know until Trump makes his next call, I think the reality is that nothing will stick. It seems that we have all forgotten about Tim Cook’s $1 million donation to Trump's inaugural committee.

Timmy Cook has already kissed the ring… and I guarantee Trump will reneg on his threat to Apple in due time. If you are an Apple (AAPL) bull, I highly recommend picking up your DCA values for the next 72-96 hours (this, of course, being the time Trump will need to rescind all prior statements).

I have made statements before that investors, especially those subscribed here, should ignore 100% of the news from all media. Just watch your portfolio and buy the dips. It doesn’t quite look like recession territory yet. It looks like overreactions and “dumb money” in the market.

People are overbuying good news, underbuying bad news, and everyone holding a long-term portfolio is laughing at everyone doing so. I recommended PM and WM as great investments to hold as we ride out the volatility. PM is +47% YTD, and WM is +16.73 YTD — incredible market outperformance from two of the most boring companies in the markets.

Unless Trump decides to “make a deal” with Apple and the EU over the weekend, stocks will likely open lower on Monday and finish the week in the red.

Weekly Picks Performance

For weeks, maybe months now, I have been saying that short term trading outperforms when there is instability and volatility in the markets. This is directly in-line with what I mentioned before: people are overbuying good news and overselling bad news.

This is why our weekly trades portfolio has been performing so well. If you look at our returns, you’ll notice that our weekly picks portfolio size has begun to separate itself from the SPY over the past few weeks.

Over the past 4 weeks, our weekly picks have averaged a 2.5% return!

An Interesting Trade Idea

I want to introduce a section here just to throw something out to you all that I find interesting, or maybe a general opportunity that is out there. Right now, that is the UNH trade.

As many of you well know, UNH has been hit with headline after headline of negative press. Their stock is down 41% YTD and down over 50% from their high in April of this year. However, there has been some interesting activity behind the scenes.

Institutions are buying en masse. In other words, the biggest money in the world loves the stock right now. In fact, over $11 billion has rolled into UNH over the past week — I don’t think that is because an analyst clicked the wrong stock to buy last week either.

I have gone long UNH… betting that the current company events will be overshadowed by the US political and economic state. I wouldn’t be surprised to see returns of over 50% with UNH stock (ceteris paribus).

My one-liner for UNH: “buy on bad news, sell on good.”

Total Portfolio Performance

Now, I know that many of my subscribers are looking for longer term plays and don’t care too much about the weekly picks. I think that is just fine — our longer term holdings have also been outperforming!

We utilize a dumbbell portfolio approach. With one side offering a long-term “safe” portfolio (our Flagship Fund & TSS 50), and the other going for growth (Contrarian Trades, Weekly Picks).

This balanced approach has proven effective time and time again. We also offer paying subscribers the ability to look at any and all of our stocks and portfolios with real-time updates here: Check it all out here (for paying subscribers).

My portfolio average return is up to 28.31% YTD.

---

Weekly Picks

Okay, let’s get into the picks that have returned 36% YTD and 57% over the past 44 weeks. As always, what you see below is a summary of our investments for this week!