Ryshab's September 2026 Portfolio Update

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My Performance (Benchmark: S&P 500)

  • 2021: -36% (+27%)
  • 2022: -76% (-19%)
  • 2023: +80% (+24%)
  • 2024: +104% (+23%)
  • 2025: +85% (+18%)
  • As of Oct 2 2026: +46% (+13%)

CAGR

  • 1 Year CAGR: +38% (+16%)
  • 3 Year CAGR: +90% (+23%)
  • 5 Year CAGR: +8% (+14%)

Current portfolio holdings:

  • Memory / Storage (35%)
    • SNDK 15%
    • MU 8%
    • SKHY 5%
    • WDC 7%
  • Networking / Connectivity (30%)
    • ALAB 14%
    • CRDO 12%
    • AVGO 4%
  • Compute / Data Centers (20%)
    • NVDA 5%
    • NBIS 12%
    • IREN 3%
  • Timers / Clocking (13%)
    • SITM 13%
  • Photonics / Optics / Materials (6%)
    • AXTI 6%
  • Specialty Pharma (4%)
    • ETON 4%
  • Defense Tech (3%)
    • KRKNF 3%

Portfolio is 111% long and has 14 positions in 7 themes.

Changes in August/September

  • Bought
    • WDC, AVGO, NVDA, ETON, AXTI, IREN (Aligned my holdings with my opportunity score)
  • Sold
    • CBRS, ONDS, BE, LITE (Due to methodology shift and these names now scoring much lower)

My Methodology - latest update

I have scrapped the concept of QIV now. The idea of catching high volatility paired with high quality was good but I think I have stumbled upon something better.

I now use a new scoring system called Opportunity Score.

Opportunity Score combines three factors - Quality, Trend and Valuation. This is my first attempt to combine high quality businesses that are showing acceleration while still having room for upside move. I have always struggled to combine quality and valuation together. It’s still a grand experiment. But so far, I like the look of it.

Here is how it works at a high level:

Opportunity Score ranges from 1 - 100
Quality 50%, Trend 30%, Valuation 20%

Quality is still my old trusted metric. This is now almost two and a half years old. This combines growth, profitability, gross margins and dilution. Very hard to game this score. Gotta be great at some kpi if you are going to suck on one. So if you have -100% profitability, you better have 200%+ growth to mitigate the drawdown. Same with dilution or margins.

Trend is a combination score. It has it’s own methodology. It strictly is an acceleration tracking metric across growth, gross margins, analyst estimate raise, ttm vs ntm growth rate change, quality and profitability. As you all know, in growth land rate of change of any kpi matters more than the kpi itself. And this trend score is trying to quantify that for a business.

Valuation is purely using a PEG ratio style approach. It basically does ev by sales by growth and then ties it to quality score rather than 1. The idea is PEG goes against 1 to show how cheap it is relatively. But not all businesses deserve to get to 1. Hence, I tie it against quality score rather than a set 1 score.

Here’s my latest Opportunity Scores. (100 max score)
And I own all green bars.

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Why I own what I own:
Note: Sharing my opinion, not advice

From everything we have heard and seen over the last couple of months, the AI story has gotten more weight now. Muse is here now. Compute is still very scarce and the agentic consumer era is just around the corner. So I see no change yet in demand dynamics. And the picks and shovels play is still in full force. From where we are today, around all time highs, the market still doesn’t seem to be anywhere near a bubble. Consider this to 2021 and we probably run a lot higher to get close to those multiples.

Memory / Storage (35%)

  • SNDK
    • The story is becoming less cyclical than the market may realize. And basically that’s the bet. If you see pure numbers, Sandisk is actually going to make more money than it’s NTM growth rate. So that I am not a fan of. But the ntm growth rate is still north of 50% and at current multiples, my hunch is it sustains it. I will probably move it to a Tier 2 holding - given the profitability above growth trend.
  • MU
    • The HBM shortage is not going away anytime soon. The more inference grows, the more memory is needed for each user and to keep track of their behavioral preferences. And supply will drip in slowly into the market. All of this leads me to believe, Micron has ways to go before things inevitably slow down. However, using my new current quarter as ttm numbers and where ntm sales estimates stand today, Micron looks to be incrementally growing about 40%+. Pretty good but the same problem. Profitability is much higher at this stage of the cycle. Again, I am not a fan of that. So keeping a close eye and probably a 7-8% sounds enough exposure for the reward at hand.
  • SKHY
    • Absolute monster numbers. SK Hynix began mass shipments of HBM4 in Q2, while HBM4E samples have already gone to major customers. Trades at a discount to the other players in this space due to being a foreign stock. This is the only reason SK Hynix is a 5% bet for me. Otherwise, if I purely go by numbers this is a Tier 1 holding.
  • WDC
    • The thesis went from AI may actually strengthen the HDD business rather than kill it. The main reason I got yet another memory/storage space exposure is because of the trend Western Digital is showing. Across the board this thing is a juggernaut. There are three names I own that is a pure acceleration play for trends. WDC, SITM and AXTI. Great entry at these levels - as I expect even a back to ath is a double.

Networking / Connectivity (30%)

  • ALAB
    • Monster last quarter and huge sales ramp incoming. Scorpio was expected to become its largest product family in Q3, a full quarter earlier than previously expected. NTM sales looks more in the realm of 80-90% even if you take this quarter as the floor for ttm numbers. That’s insane when you consider it’s highly profitable. So pure Tier 1 play right now.
  • CRDO
    • The backward looking numbers look terrible. Huge ramp down. The trend is not good either. AEC may have been the wedge, not the end-state. The optics revenue ramp is coming and I think this dip is a buying opportunity. I expect when you will look back in a year, Credo will have put up 70%+ ttm numbers. And if they deliver, we should be much higher from today’s price action. Let’s see.
  • AVGO
    • Custom AI silicon has gone from optionality to a second compute ecosystem. I am slowly starting to get back into mega cap names. AVGO and NVDA seems too mis-priced. Broadcom is probably going to do 60% forward revenue and even if it slips a little bit on the multiple, I think 30-40% appreciation in stock price is very possible. Hence, the entry.

Compute/Data Centers (20%)

  • NVDA
    • Undervalued. I think everyone knows it too. I see an easy 30% return, park your money kind of business. So for now, stashing some cash here. 10T market cap is coming if they keep this up. If SpaceX and Anthropic can get 2T valuation, I think Nvidia deserves 10T valuation in the near future.
  • NBIS & IREN
    • I am split between Nebius and Iren. Both look good to me in terms of forward growth. Demand is no longer the question. Execution per dollar of capital is. Nebius is a bit ahead on the execution curve. But IREN time is coming soon. So I want to keep this neo-cloud space exposure around 10-20%. No idea who will be the winner but I feel there is leges in this thesis. The life of an older chip is extending and compute is very scarce right now. So as long as they execute, the demand side should hold up for the next few quarters. And then we will see.

Timers / Clocking (13%)

  • SITM
    • One of the few profitable companies that is most likely to grow 100%+ in the next 12 months. As AI systems become bigger, faster and more distributed, keeping thousands of high-speed components synchronized becomes harder, not easier. SiTime can now potentially own much more of that signal chain. Last qtr was great and though it’s a 20B business, I see it becoming a 50B business easily in the near future.

Photonics / Optics / Materials (6%)

  • AXTI
    • Since AXTI sits underneath the optics companies, Indium phosphide substrates ultimately enable lasers and other high-performance optoelectronic components used in datacenter connectivity. If 800G → 1.6T → 3.2T causes optical content and laser demand to keep rising, AXTI does not need to pick the winning transceiver vendor. High risk high reward play here. Not that high of a quality business yet but trend is an absolute monster. That is why I am bullish.

Specialty Pharma (4%)

  • ETON
    • I fumbled this one badly. Got it at $14 and sold at $18 and now it’s at $55. Oh boy! I increasingly view this as a rare-disease platform, not a biotech bet. It’s not cheap but forward multi year growth visibility is real. Hence, I feel the multiples will hold around 15 ish. Growth is still at 50%+ pace and the business is highly profitable. Great pipeline and successful commercialization is a potent mix for the next 12-18 month timeline.

Defense (3%)

  • KRKNF
    • Absolute disaster in my portfolio. 30% drawdown and counting. The story looks great on paper. But mr.market has been ruthless towards it. Sure, Kraken has it’s issues but boy is it cheap. It will all come down to the next two quarters. I am holding until then. The revenue jump post merger from 19 mil. to 81 mil. If the land this anywhere near that number, I think shareholders will be ok. But super high risk high reward here. If they miss or push timelines, I will be out too.

Wrapping Up

Apologies, I have a two year toddler and my job takes a big chunk of my time. I post on X @ryshabtalks regularly and put out my weekly portfolio updates every Friday. But I don’t think I can do justice to monthly reviews. I find these exercises for me extremely valuable but I think I will switch to quarterly from here on.

Overall, I am quite pleased with my performance this year. Through three quarters, this will be year four of beating the markets handily. And I think my process has gotten much stronger over this period. I think I am pretty sure is I will have 50% drawdowns multiple times a year. There is no way to avoid that. At least not anything reliable that I have found till now. But hopefully the good years will take care of the ugly ones.

Wishing everyone a great fourth quarter of investing. Cheers!

My previous portfolio reviews:

2026: Feb | Mar | Apr | May/Jun | Jul
2025: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec
2024: May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

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Appreciate you taking the time to post. I have a 4 and 2 year old too so I get it. Your scoring system is intriguing to me, the quality score is very similar to how I use my screener on Koyfin.

ETON has taken a big breather since the run up. I reckon the market is seeing them as pretty expensive now, so I think they’ll need a strong follow up quarter.

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Thanks for this Ryshab. In your chart SIMO only has an opportunity score of 44. I’m curious what is dragging down SIMO’s number in your calculations. Thanks

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This one caught my eye so I had to start digging into it. And…wow. That price appreciation is stunning…sitting at 1091x trailing earnings and shares up 1,600% in last year. Dude. So that makes me nervous and what pushed me over to caution was the options returns here (OT) which implies that volatility is expected moving forward.

Now, we take those numbers and look forward, then you have projected earning up 147% (if that indium phosphide demand continues and china doesn’t kill exports) and margins growing past 40%. Then it seems if you price forward you get 49x times price to earnings.

What bothers me at the moment is I am not seeing them pivot to innovation and tehy are mostly relying on a business that has existed for a long time and only just recently became popular. I looked into their research spending and it was 9 million in 2025 and about 6.7 million in first two quarters of '26. That doesn’t strike me as a company wanting to innovate. They are doing something with 6" crystal growth systems (huh?) but that seems to be just improving a current process, incremental change, and not spending new cash to develop new products.

I get that their product is important now…but how are they planning to stay relevant. I agree with the high risk part of this, but now I wonder about the chances for high reward if you are “investing” here instead of trading. Hmmm.

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Opportunity Score. Is this something you are willing to share? If it is propriatry, I completely understand.

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Appreciate you taking the time to post. I have a 4 and 2 year old too so I get it. Your scoring system is intriguing to me, the quality score is very similar to how I use my screener on Koyfin.

ETON has taken a big breather since the run up. I reckon the market is seeing them as pretty expensive now, so I think they’ll need a strong follow up quarter.

@prust04 I can only imagine what kind of calmness you experience at home with a 2 and 4 year old :grinning_face: But congratulations! precious years go by fast. I tried to automate the quality score using TradingView or Koyfin but there are some custom formulas that I had to write and use some bumps on ntm data from analysts for which I just wrote it myself. Much easier than trying to figure it out in a bound system.

On ETON I agree, it is definitely richly valued. My hope is a 50% grower with steady numbers should do 30%+ in returns hopefully. So ETON is in my stead basket section, not really an undervalued play.

In your chart SIMO only has an opportunity score of 44. I’m curious what is dragging down SIMO’s number in your calculations.

@MoneySpin SIMO has a quality of 20/50, trend 14/30 and valuation is 10/20. So as per my methodology, it’s got some valuation head room, kind of in the middle of the pack for trends and quality is not high.
Quality Score = 39
Formula is ((NTM Growth + Profit) x Gross Margin Multiplier ) x Dilution Multiplier)
For SIMO NTM Growth is at 45% for me, Profit is 6% - an average of EBIDTA and FCF margins, GM is 50%, my multiplier penalizes half so 75% is what I use as multiplier and then there is no dilution. Using the formula, you get around 39. I use 100 as a benchmark to get 50 points from quality part of the equation. Since quality score is 39, it gets 20 for quality part of the equation.

Hence, the score is 44. (20+14+10)

@dlbuffy I think I am investing but if you see my holdings I am probably trading. I barely have any stocks that lasts 12 months in my portfolio. Some lasts 1 or 2 months. My style is I put my foot in the fire and figure out, shoot! this is burning. So to your point there is a lot of issues with AXT Inc. But there are a lot of positives as well. The wind behind it’s back is probably the biggest one. Their gross margins went from 29% to 45%. If they are going to maintain this, that’s a rerating. Their forward growth is 110%+. Hyper growth + margin expansion is the best 1-2 punch in growth investing land. And AXTI has it. And they just went cash flow positive. That is also huge. An NTM sales multiple of 15 for a business that is going to grow 100%+ next year and most likely 50%+ the year after is pretty good in my opinion.

Opportunity Score. Is this something you are willing to share? If it is propriatry, I completely understand.

@flyingelephant1 I am happy to share my Opportunity Score formula. Just know over the last 12-18 months, I went from Quality Score, to Quality Adjusted Volatility Score QIV to Opportunity Score. So I do change my mind often. Hopefully it’s improving the process.

Here’s the formulas:
Opportunity Score (100%) = Quality Score (50%) + Trend Score (30%) + Valuation Score (20%)

Quality Score = (((NTM Growth Rate + Profit Margin) x Gross Margin Multiplier) x Dilution Multiplier)
NTM Growth Rate = Analyst NTM Growth Rate + (1/4 th Analyst LTM Upgrade %)
I use 1/4 because I allow businesses to get one quarter of credit for the amount of upgrade rate they are doing currently.
Profit Margin = (FCF Margin + EBIDTA Margin) / 2
Gross Margin Multiplier = (GM% +100)/2
I do this to soften the gross margin drag by half.
Same for Dilution multiplier. I use half the dilution rate to cut the quality score.

Trend Score is a additive score that accounts for 30/100 points. The trend is usually calculated over 6 to 12 month period.
The ingredients are 25% Growth Rate change, 20% gross margin rate change, 15% analyst upgrade rate change, 15% forward growth increase rate, 15% quality score rate change, 10% profit rate change. Then across my universe of 170 stocks I track I force rank everything on the scale of 0-30. And that’s how each business gets a Trend Score.

Valuation is and average of my upside score and analyst upside target.

My upside score = Quality Score / (EV/GP/NTM Growth). This spits out upside potential percentage. I use this and analyst target upside and average out to see valuation. percent. Then if there is 100% potential in the next 12 months, it gets a 20 score or 0 if there is 0% returns expected.

That’s where Opportunity Score sits now.

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Thank you very much. I will try and duplicate it.

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I see you brought huge changes to the opportunity scores for few companies like MU, NBIS and IREN. Is it just market pricing which is moving the scores so much or something else changed? I am trying to work through your equations, but it is not the same.

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Ryshab, can you expand more on why your position in IREN is relatively small, but has the highest Opportunity Score. Wouldn’t your portfolio weights be relatively in line with your opportunity score if that is your valuation tool?

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I also have some misgivings about AXTI. Their supply chain and manufacturing facilities are located in China. A lot of their revenue comes from sales to Chinese companies. Stuff like that didn’t used to concern me too much. I’ve spent a lot of time in China. My wife is Chinese. But trade has become weaponized unlike it has ever been in my memory - and I’m old. So the dependency on Chinese licensing and permitting and regulatory, hence political exposure is worth considering.

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I see you brought huge changes to the opportunity scores for few companies like MU, NBIS and IREN. Is it just market pricing which is moving the scores so much or something else changed?

Hi @Kaaes currently I have been making a lot of tweaks to the Opportunity Score. This is why it keeps changing over the last few months. I went from quality + trend + valuation + iv to dropping iv and now I have just two leges - 50% quality and 50% trend. So there is a lot of permutations I am trying with the help of Claude and hopefully it will settle down soon. The main conflict in my head now is quality is a slow moving accurate metric that is backtested to produce results but it’s slow to get you in and slow to get you out. Trend adds the early part. And I am trying to tweak trend to see how early can I get in that is repeatable. More to come.

Ryshab, can you expand more on why your position in IREN is relatively small, but has the highest Opportunity Score.

Hi @NeilsonAlvarez when I first time enter a position, it is usually at Tier 3, which is 5%. And sometimes around 8% if the position deserves Tier 2 and I have not owned it. Then I let the position prove itself. If it keeps falling, then I try not to reward it. Especially if there are other positions that is working and I believe in them too. So this is the main reason, though a stock can be top of rankings and should be 15% or Tier 1 allocation, I would still start it at Tier 3.

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