Rutherford-Darwin Portfolio Review: 3 October 2025

Sailing Club (complete with Safety escort) heading out for Training Session

Another bullish week in US equities with the SPX (S&P 500 Index) hitting more new all-time highs and closing the week a little over 1% higher than last week’s close:

There was no historical September seasonal weakness in the past month and we remain in a bullish uptrend with 6950 looking like the next potential resistance zone as we now head into the historically strong end-of-year period for US stocks.  However, we still have conflicting signals from the MACD and RSI Indicators so should not be too surprised at a pullback before getting there.

Despite the strength in US equity markets they were not the strongest performing asset class over the past week:

being seriously outperformed by Crypto and with Gold, International Equities and Bonds all out-performing.  Only Energy/Oil really under-performed.

No changes were made to the holdings in the Darwin Portfolio (IAU, EEM and SPLG) in the last week and performance looks like this:

with an IRR of 10.8% at 4.5% volatility – Sharpe ratio of 2.4 – or a very comfortable risk-adjusted Rate of Return.  The portfolio is currently un-hedged.  Now I just need to carefully increase the investment level (currently at only ~65%) so as to keep pace with the fully invested benchmark returns.

Checking on current rankings and recommendations from the Kipling BHS workbook:

we still see Buy recommendations for SPLG, EEM and IAU (all currently held) with an optional Buy recommendation on the benchmark AOA fund. I am still ignoring the SVXY Buy recommendation until we see a spike in volatility (likely on a strong pullback/trend reversal) – if I jump in now, having ignored this Buy signal for many months, it will virtually guarantee a pullback 🙂 .

The Rotation model, that I am still working on, and migrating towards, is giving the following recommendations:

confirming Buy recommendations for SPLG, EEM and IAU and, also a Buy recommendation for IBIT (Crypto):

I will be watching IBIT when the market opens next week and will add a position if the recent bullish crossover signal is confirmed.