Executive Buying Newsletter

October 5, 2026 Edition

(Executive Buying Capital LP may hold some or all of these positions.)

The market spent September arguing with a 5% 10-year and still finished the year in good shape. Monday the S&P 500 added 0.7% to 7,773.95, within about 0.3% of the summer high, and is up 13.6% year to date. The Nasdaq rose 1.1% to a record 27,477 and is up 18.2% for the year. The Dow lagged, up 0.2% to 51,268.

The bond market did not get the memo. The 10-year finished near 5.31%, still around levels last seen in the mid-2000s. What changed is the Fed path. September payrolls came in at 29,000 against an expected 84,000, and the odds of an October hike collapsed from roughly 70% a week ago to about 20%. A December hike is still priced. Fed minutes are out Wednesday. Earnings season starts with the usual soft openers before the big reports.

Oil eased. Brent settled a little over $100 after swinging between $100 and $103, with Middle East exports up and the G7 talking about more supply. The war premium is still in the price. Gold held near $4,170. Tech led. That is the tape this book is built for: growth still working, rates still high, energy no longer a one-way squeeze.

Changes this issue. Out: BRK.B, GOOGL, IBM. In: PSI, QQQ, TSLA. The book is now AAPL, CVX, IBIT, META, MSFT, PSI, QQQ, TSLA. Less ballast, more beta. The semiconductor sleeve and the Nasdaq vehicle are the adds. Tesla is back after a delivery print that stopped the decline story for at least one quarter.

AAPL (Apple Inc.) Apple is the cash compounder that did not need a chip rally to stay owned. Shares are around $334, roughly flat on a day the Nasdaq made a record, and still near the top of a 52-week range that runs from the mid-$240s to about $345. The foldable cycle is in the market. The AI capex race is not Apple’s race. That is fine. We hold it for the installed base, the buyback, and the fact that a 5.3% 10-year has not broken the multiple. It is the defensive name in a book that just got more aggressive.

CVX (Chevron Corporation) Chevron is the energy sleeve, and the tape just got less friendly to it. Shares are around $206, off the September highs, as Brent backed away from $109 toward $100. The fundamental case has not changed. Production is higher after Hess, the dividend is intact, and the Microsoft West Texas power agreement is still a call on data-center electricity. What changed is the daily oil print. We are not adding into a $3 swing in Brent. We are keeping the position because a war that can still close the Gulf is not a reason to be zero energy.

IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF) IBIT stays as the scarce-asset sleeve. Size stays limited. Bitcoin is still well below the October 2025 highs, and the Senate’s failure to pass a market-structure bill has not been fixed. The reason it is in the book is the same reason it was in the book in September: a 5.3% 10-year and a fiscal backdrop that keeps pushing long yields up are both arguments for an asset no central bank issues. It is not a trading position. It is the piece of the book that does not care what the Nasdaq did on Monday.

META (Meta Platforms, Inc.) Meta was one of the stronger megacaps Monday, trading in the $740 area, up roughly 2%. Advertising is still the business. The agent that can send mail, book travel, and complete a purchase is the product the market wanted. Capex of $130–$145 billion for 2026 is still the cost. The stock has worked since the mid-September rotation out of pure chip beta and into the platforms that already have the users. We hold it. We are not pretending the buildout is cheap.

MSFT (Microsoft Corporation) Microsoft is the core enterprise AI holding and was up about 1.6% Monday, trading around $526. Azure, Office, GitHub, and the OpenAI distribution deal are the franchise. The data-center build is the variable that now decides who wins, not who gets the next GPU allocation. Capex is enormous. That is the bear case and the reason the stock is still owned. If the market is going to pay up for growth with the 10-year at 5.3%, it should be paying for seats and cloud contracts, not for a demo.

PSI (Invesco Semiconductors ETF) PSI is the new single-theme add. It is the Invesco Dynamic Semiconductors ETF, 30 U.S. semiconductor names, expense ratio 0.55%, about $3.1 billion in assets. It closed Monday near $160.74 after a sharp run from the mid-$120s in mid-September. Top weights are Intel, AMD, Micron, Texas Instruments, KLA, Applied Materials, Analog Devices, and Lam. The 52-week range is roughly $67 to $189. Year-to-date performance is in triple digits. This is not a quiet holding. It is the explicit bet that the chip cycle — memory, equipment, and the second-tier designers, not just Nvidia — is still the leadership group. We sized it as a sleeve, not as the whole book.

QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) QQQ is the Nasdaq-100 vehicle, trading around $756, up about 0.9% Monday, with the index itself at a record. Top weights are Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Micron, AMD, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Tesla. That overlap with the single-stock names is intentional. QQQ is the beta we did not want to express only through five individual tickets. If megacap tech keeps making the highs while the Dow lags a 5.3% 10-year, this is the cleanest way to stay long the tape without picking every winner. It is also the first thing we cut if the October hike odds come back.

TSLA (Tesla, Inc.) Tesla is back on the list after Friday’s delivery print. Third-quarter deliveries were 486,532 vehicles, ahead of a Street that was looking for something in the 450,000s to low 460,000s. Production ran below sales, so inventory came down. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 gigawatts. Shares jumped on the news and were around $371 to $379 Monday, still down on the year and still well below the 52-week high near $499. Earnings are October 21. The delivery beat stopped the “third straight down year” story. It did not fix margins, autonomy spend, or the multiple. We own a starter, not a full weight, and the October 21 report decides whether it stays.

Positioning note Eight names. Three changes. Out went the ballast (Berkshire), the second ad platform (Alphabet), and the cheap enterprise software name (IBM). In came semiconductor beta (PSI), Nasdaq beta (QQQ), and a delivery-driven Tesla starter. What did not change: Apple and Microsoft as the quality compounders, Meta as the advertising platform, Chevron as the energy hedge, IBIT as the scarce-asset sleeve.

This is a more offensive book than the September list. It should be. The Nasdaq just made a record with the 10-year above 5.2% and the October hike taken off the table. If Wednesday’s minutes or the first earnings prints put the hike back on, PSI, QQQ, and TSLA are the names that get reviewed first.