First, let me express my sincere gratitude to the 20 new paid subscribers in the first five days of May. You will not be disappointed as billcara.com will soon go live and all paid subscribers will be provided extra discounts as I try to consolidate the billing. The new subscriptions will be based on SAAS principles, which my tech-savvy associate Alexei assures me is the way to move my content into the modern era. LOL. He kids me that my thinking of technology has not changed since I started billcara.com in 2004. My age might have something to do with that.
PERSPECTIVE
The first full reporting week of the restarted P2 Dow 30 Maverick portfolio delivered exactly the kind of evidence the program was designed to teach: stop-loss discipline works, earnings cut both ways, and a well-built portfolio can absorb a bad week from one position without breaking on the strength of another.
The portfolio closed today at $99,554, down 0.45% from the April 27 restart baseline of $100,000. The S&P 500 closed at 7,259, up 1.19% from its restart baseline of 7,173.91. In week one, P2 gave up roughly 1.6 percentage points of relative performance to the benchmark.
That is not, on its face, a result to celebrate. But it is exactly the trade-off this portfolio was built to accept. Cash is now 59.5% — up from 46.4% a week ago — because the Microsoft stop at $412 was triggered and respected. MSFT closed the trigger session at $411.38 and the position was exited in full the following session. The day after that exit, Microsoft reported a blowout fiscal Q3 — $82.9 billion in revenue (+18% YoY), $4.27 diluted EPS, an AI run-rate of $37 billion (+123% YoY) — and the stock rallied. That sequence is uncomfortable but not regrettable. The stop did its job. We will buy MSFT back at lower prices, and we will respect the next stop just as faithfully.
The week’s offset came from Visa. V reported fiscal Q2 on April 28: revenue of approximately $11.2 billion (+17% YoY), adjusted EPS of $3.31 against a $3.10 estimate, payments volume +9%, and Value-Added Services +27%. Management raised full-year guidance and authorized a fresh $20 billion buyback. The post-earnings move in V offset a meaningful portion of the combined drawdown in MSFT and NVDA. That is precisely what diversification across six well-screened names is supposed to do, and on its first real test, it did it.
NVIDIA is the position in the most uncomfortable place. The INSTAT score has worsened, and the loss against a $216.61 cost basis was substantial enough that I trimmed approximately half the position at $198.48 to lock in a defined loss rather than ride a deteriorating technical setup further down. The remaining half is on a short leash. NVDA’s forecast 2027 P/E of approximately 23.8× is reasonable for a company of its earnings power, and if the broad market continues higher, NVDA is the most likely Dow 30 name to lead. I will add back to a full position only if the Four Gates clear again — not on hope.
JPMorgan, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and the trimmed half of NVDA continue to hold. JPM and JNJ both reported strong Q1 results on April 14 that remain the supportive fundamental backdrop. PG was entered with full awareness of a Point & Figure High Pole Warning — appropriate caution for a late-cycle tape — and the strong Q3 FY26 print on April 24 provided the fundamental underpinning that justified the technical risk.
The portfolio now stands at 40.5% invested in equities and 59.5% in cash and T-bills, across five active names. The cash weighting moved up by design, not by accident. That is the fiduciary discipline that took all seven Cara portfolios to 100% cash on February 27, 2026, applied at the position level instead of the portfolio level.
The S&P’s 1.19% week is exactly the cost of carrying high cash in a rising tape. The corollary — that the same cash buffer cuts drawdown by more than half when the tape turns — is the bargain we signed up for. New Maverick students should sit with this week’s tape and study the trade-off carefully. It is the most important lesson the portfolio will teach all year.