Good Friday morning and hoping your Christmas was a good one. If today follows the course of history we’ll have solid gains (as it’s the 2nd best trading day of the year). It’s also the 2nd day of the Santa Claus Rally, so the end result matters even more.

We’ll be posting our full year returns next week. If the year ended today we’d be up just over 38% for 2025. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up 18.5%, Nasdaq is up 21% and the Russell 2000 (our primary bogey as it best matches the VRA Portfolio risk profile) is up 14%, meaning we’ve considerably outperformed our bogey, as well as each major index. 2025 will mark 19/22 years we’ve outperformed the market.

If you’ve been bullish this year you’ve been rewarded. But 2025 is nothing like what we’re going to experience in 2026.

Yes, lots of people are turning bullish. As a contrarians we don’t much care for that. But here’s the distinction; it’s one thing to "turn bullish" but it’s another thing altogether to "be bullish" and aggres...