What's your Risk Tolerance and Here’s How I’m Managing Risk, AI and Gold

Some people praise me for having diamond hands and not selling when the market goes down. That may be just in my DNA, but unlike many who are reading this - I’ve invested in multi year downturns. I was 30 years old in 2000 when the bottom fell out. I was 38 years old in 2008 when my portfolio was taken back down again after recovering. I was down just like everyone else and my only focus was “What will rebound faster? Do I hold the right stocks right now or should I readjust?”

In both 2000 and 2008, I didn’t have the tools I have now. I wasn’t as savvy as I am now with technicals and fundamental research. The websites or information I had access to was a mix of “is the data right?”. I wound up doing okay during those years, but I’m confident with the tools I have today, I could have done better.

Today I am confident in the stocks I own with the amount I own in each. I know which ones are trades, which ones are investments and what prices I would like to see in the timeframe that I hold each stock. I am fine losing 50% on some of the positions I’m in, but I know many people ARE NOT. I’ve never blown up an account and I’ve never gone to zero in any account so someone who says “you can’t hold in a 50% downturn because it will destroy” isn’t someone who understands - I’ve lived through that and I’ve come out fine on the other side better.

There will be a time when I will have to be a little more protective, but I’m not leveraged and AAPL 0.00%↑ is not going to $0 anytime soon. Understanding my own risk tolerance is key to having the success in the markets that I’ve had and there will always be losses. I tend to look at the quality of the stocks I own versus the actual stock price.

You may think - WTF is Gary doing - he’s riddled with fever. Stanley Black and Decker - SWK 0.00%↑ ? Let me explain how this worked.

1. I asked Sidekick to help me find the top 3 strong charts for this week in the S&P 500.

2. It created a scanner in Trendspider that you can import from my store collection (once it hits the approval process). Click on the photo to import it to your Trendspider setup.

   

3. Sidekick then gave me 3 choices - here’s the link for that conversation and why it really liked SWK 0.00%↑ .

   

So here is the chart of the day - SWK 0.00%↑

• The Seeking Alpha Bundle - THIS IS WHAT I SUGGEST FOR 90% OF PEOPLE. You save the most amount of money and it’s “the sweet spot”.

• Alpha Picks - if you’re not interested in the bundle above, this would be my 2nd pick. I personally have this portfolio and I share my way of managing it on the podcast.

• Seeking Alpha Premium - get the top 2nd half 2026 stocks, the 4 out of the 10 Top 2026 stocks they mentioned as “buy the dip on now”, the top Quant rated stocks and so much more with a FREE 7 day trial.

• Seeking Alpha Pro - this is for a small amount of customers who want some additional features. I use this tier for my research, but I do think the sweet spot for me as a paying customer would be the bundle offer.

I will have more about this portfolio in the first week in August, but I wanted to share that I do have an offer for you to save $50 off. If you’re concerned about the long term in the market, this portfolio over this downturn has returned over 11% since June 1. 30 high yielding names rebalanced every week for a more active portfolio focused around providing locked in income along with growth. Click the photo for more information.

1. We are still at war

2. There is no peace plan

3. Oil can still skyrocket at a moments notice which we’ve seen bring down the markets.

4. Earnings are growing 28% year over year vs. 13% expected

   

I wasn’t super happy with this answer so if you’re really interested - I would suggest going in to a conversation with Perplexity which has done better with questions like this for me. But Seeking Alpha’s AI has been improved significantly and I really do like it now for certain things like comparing companies in the same industry and getting quant style answers.

5. The jobs market seems be deteriorating which would mean the Fed can’t raise interest rates

6. Bonds have come down

7. August QQQ 0.00%↑ is up 5% already after being down only 5.6% in July. So if you bought at the beginning of July at $729 - you’re currently at $723 which is NOT catastrophic.

You all know I’m a fan of Steve Cress who says holding fundamentally good stocks or even buying the dip in those stocks has significantly outperformed on the way back up. He manages alpha picks and I’ll go over that a bunch in this podcast.

But then you have a bit of a newcomer who I’ve been a fan of Ana have bought many stocks based on his short thesis on Twitter. Shay is now coming off his worst month in July - but zoom out because even a bad month does not change the trend of his portfolio.

Shay Boloor@StockSavvyShay

After July became my worst month since launching the Growth Portfolio three years ago, August has already recovered nearly all of those losses with a 17% rebound. I welcome volatility because it creates opportunities to upgrade portfolio quality and add to secular growth themes

11:35 AM · Aug 8, 2026 · 53.6K Views

35 Replies · 17 Reposts · 326 Likes

The point is that maybe July tested your risk tolerance. If it did I think that’s a good thing. But I’ll continue to point out that most of this audience have not traded in a multi year downturn so if July hurt - just imagine 18 months out of 2 years being exactly like July and what would you do?

For me I’ve been through 2 of these types of events in 2000 and 2008 where I had significantly less money than I do now but the strategy was the same. Position my portfolio in what I thought could be stocks that will rebound faster.

I still think the bull market continues and so does Goldman Sachs in a note to clients

Today I use the tools I have to help identify those stocks but nothing is certain in the market and I use these tools to help me stay focused and know the opportunities ahead.

In fact I think there’s are some great names on this list of 52 week lows - but for me I want a trend change before I invest in any of these - that’s why I want charts as well as fundamentals.

The last winner I went over that was running in the charts was $eat. This was on July 13th when the stock was trading at $189 and it’s now at $225. That’s a 19% difference and one that you could have over weighted in the portfolio because it’s still a buy in the 4 hour algorithm.

Go and read the newsletter that I posted less than a month ago about a potential rotation out of tech.

This is just to highlight the overall performance of the portfolio stocks. Many are still positive even with the portfolio underperforming the S&P over the last month.

Portfolio management might mean taking some lower holding % of some of the high fliers and that’s where sidekick can help.

Remember - I recommend the seeking alpha bundle and Trendspider as this is what I use to manage my alpha picks portfolio which is still greatly outperforming the S&P ytd and over 1 year.

Tom Lee is still bullish calling for 8,000 on the S&P or $800 on $spy (a 3.7% upside). In a month that would be huge considering the month but you’re already up 2.6% in August.

And what drives all time highs? Record earnings.

I heard in the chat and online that folks were upset with companies posting great earnings and the stock going down. There were a few examples of that but many of the stocks that went down had huge run ups, larger expectations or guidance that may have fallen short or even just profit taking.

That’s why I love sidekick.

An example - AMD 0.00%↑ - historic earnings - sidekick said it was priced for perfection and locking in profits was smart.

Another example - SNDK 0.00%↑ - sidekick mentioned the chart looked broken and the risk/reward would be better to take profits or wait until after earnings to see what happened.

Earnings is what drives stock prices up and alpha pick portfolio has a stellar record of earnings performance with 32 of the portfolio reporting and 75% have beaten earnings.

What about this week? More earnings.

Let’s use something like this to ask sidekick what the best earnings play this week is.

Remember - having sidekick is like having a $32,000 Bloomberg terminal and the best analyst to determine what all of that data means which is priceless. All for less than $1,000 per year.

Sidekick even recommended the bias in the prompt I used since many reporting earnings are sitting at 52 week highs.

Notice the best opportunities are still ai names

This is a stock I’ve wanted to own and should have just traded it on the 4 hour but do they have a chance of popping on earnings?

Some of the best performing alpha picks stocks in the last month have been gold stocks.

We’ve seen B 0.00%↑ NEM 0.00%↑ KGC 0.00%↑ and SSRM 0.00%↑ up as much as 10% last week and if gold goes up even more - this may be a huge opportunity.

Let’s ask sidekick to analyze the gold trade.

I’m going to publish this in the newsletter for you to read if interested - but I wanted to point out sidekicks answer about the alpha picks gold exposure

They are constantly developing new tools, strategies and scanners for you to use. And there’s something new they are building that will undoubtedly be awesome.

• Use the group strategy tester - use this to test the 4 hour algorithm across the Nasdaq 100.

• Use claude opus 5 now in sidekick - it’s smarter than any model out there and Trendspider is using it as a closed source model to give you best in class analysis based on prompts you give it.

  

And if you think this isn’t a big deal - look at this exact example last week - COHR 0.00%↑

TrendSpider@TrendSpider

Opus 5 in Sidekick is a cheat code. Last week we asked it to find stocks with the most bullish sentiment from CEOs. $COHR ranked near the top, then ripped nearly +50% this week. So we pointed it at the top 20 $SPY performers YTD and asked for a fundamental ranking. Memory,

TrendSpider @TrendSpider

Opus 5 🤝 Vetted market data 🤝 Your charts Get up to 45% off + 1 free month of Sidekick Plus, this weekend only. 🤖 https://t.co/J3HvTAPIYg

11:25 PM · Aug 7, 2026 · 300K Views

14 Replies · 22 Reposts · 155 Likes

And one I’m super excited about

The kpi segments - want to know iPhone sales for Apple? Is it growing? Here you go.

The ceo and creator of seeking alpha went over on YouTube how he customizes his home page and uses portfolios. I think subscribers and non subscribers can get alot out of this

One thing I like is seeking alphas ai abilities. Like Trendspider they use a closed system only using their own data so it’s far better than a general internet llm that has slop.

So while I was ill last week one thing that was nice was the daily summary.

I honestly didn’t like this analysis - I think it was too much as I was using the mobile version of Trendspider and I have a feeling the prompt just freaked out Sidekick. But here you go.

I used perplexity to create a super prompt in sidekick to help it find

The hottest sector in the market
The hottest stock in that sector

So here’s your bonus for listening

It ranked NVDA 0.00%↑ AVGO 0.00%↑ and PLTR 0.00%↑ as the best opportunities in the market right now for swing traders.