Portfolio Update September 2026: Bought 7 Stocks for $25,895.09, Sold 0, Net Inflow $25,895.09

The time has come for my monthly portfolio update. At the end of every month, I will update my portfolio and comment on any changes. I do that for accountability and also so you may glean some ideas on how I allocate my capital. Starting this month, I am adding a performance review in the style of a fund manager's letter, so you can see not just what I bought and sold, but what drove the month's result.

Transactions

In September I bought 7 stocks for $25,895.09 and sold nothing, for a net inflow of $25,895.09.

The month was dominated by a new position in Fair Isaac (FICO). I bought 11 shares in early September for about $10,035, then added 24 more shares on September 29 for about $15,441, after the Federal Housing Finance Agency moved to let mortgage lenders use VantageScore — a direct competitor to the FICO score — and Rocket Mortgage named VantageScore 4.0 its preferred scoring model. The stock fell more than 20% on the news, and I used the selloff to build the position at an average cost of about $728 per share. All told, FICO accounted for $25,476.43 of the month's purchases, and the 35-share position closed the month at 0.50% of the portfolio.

The remainder was dividend reinvestments and small automatic purchases: SCHG ($210.94), SPGI ($103.47), NVR ($90.82), GOOGL ($12.74), UNP ($0.40), and ILCB ($0.29).

Performance Review

For the month, the portfolio gained 0.36%, rising from $4,574,156.88 to $4,590,457.13, ahead of the 0.45% decline in the S&P 500.

September was a narrow market. Cooling inflation lifted technology into month-end and the Nasdaq held up better than the Dow and small caps, but breadth was poor — most sectors and most stocks lagged, with the 10-year Treasury yield sitting near a 24-year high around 5.29%.

Against this backdrop, the portfolio's AI-levered mega-caps did the heavy lifting. Meta Platforms was the standout contributor, rising about 27% — its strongest month since 2022 — after launching its Muse personal AI-agent app and showcasing new AI hardware and enterprise tools at its Connect conference. The market is once again willing to reward a company with a credible AI monetization story. Strength in the Nasdaq flowed through to the portfolio's largest holding, the ProShares UltraPro QQQ, which gained about 13%. Nvidia added about 5%.

These gains were largely offset by weakness across the rest of the book. Smaller positions and non-technology holdings lagged in a month of notably weak breadth, leaving the net advance modest despite the mega-cap fireworks.

Notable changes in positioning: the new 35-share Fair Isaac position described above, built across the FHFA-driven selloff. It is a bet that the market overreacted to the VantageScore headline — though with the stock down about 9% from my cost into early October, it is too soon to grade that call.

See also: Net Worth Update September 2026