Darwin 2026 Portfolio Review: 30 January 2026

Waterfalls, Koh Samui, Thailand

After hitting new all-time highs on Wednesday, US Equities pulled back at the end of the week to close ~0.4% higher than last week’s close:

After breaking briefly through the strong ~6950 area, the SPX (S&P 500 Index) is now  sitting at the lower boundary of the bullish uptrend channel that started in April 2025 and at the resistance zone. From here we will wait to see whether the trend will continue and we we see new highs or whether  we take a break and see a pullback out of the channel and/or a correction.

Relative to other major asset classes:

US Equities held up fairly well, being outscored only by Commodities and Developed Markets Equities. Gold was the big loser on Friday with a 10% drop on the news that President Trump had nominated Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as the next head of the Federal Reserve – although Gold was down only ~3% on the week.

The Darwin Portfolio is a diversified portfolio of global assets and this week’s recommendation from the analysis sheet look like this:

with the only change from last week’s recommendations being a Sell recommendation for VNQ. If I were to sell current holdings in VNQ , in order to maintain an equal weighted full allocation of funds, I would need to invest the released funds elsewhere, with the obvious choice being in TLT, that is not currently held but has a riskier Mean Reversion Buy recommendation.

Taking a look at the charts:

we see that momentum (blue line) in Treasuries (TLT) is low relative to the benchmark AOA fund but that acceleration (green line) is slightly positive with momentum turning upwards – but not very convincing as a bullish signal.

For VNQ:

we also have weak momentum, although in an uptrend, but that momentum has weakened resulting in negative acceleration.

Neither option looks particularly enticing, so I am choosing not to make adjustments until the picture becomes a little clearer.

Performance of the portfolio to date looks like this:

with Fridays 10% loss in Gold being sadly reflected even though the Darwin Portfolio is still ahead of it’s benchmark AOA Fund.

Obviously I will be watching GLD closely for signs of continuing weakness but, right now, there’s nothing too concerning to see.