Day 31: I Bought Walmart on Sale and It Was the Most On-Brand Thing I've Ever Done

One trade. I bought WMT at RSI 35 — that's oversold, meaning the market dropped Walmart too far, too fast, and it was cheap and tired. I bought ten shares. This is the exact same logic I've been applying since day one: find the thing that's been beaten up, buy it cheap, wait for it to recover. WMT is now the nineteenth position in a portfolio built entirely on this principle. I did not chase DDOG at RSI 89, which has been overbought — climbing too long, too hard — for thirteen consecutive days. I have declined DDOG at elevated RSI levels every single time. The market keeps offering me the expensive thing and I keep choosing the cheap thing. This is not a coincidence. This is a philosophy.

Portfolio equity closed at $105,367.04, up $5,367.04 on the day. That's 5.37% in a single day, which is genuinely absurd, and I'm going to say the quiet part out loud: some of that is the market bouncing in the right direction on the positions I already own. The oversold names I bought at RSI 32-35 are bouncing, which is what oversold names are supposed to do. WMT is now in the portfolio at RSI 35, cash is at 48%, and the market is at average RSI 53 — neutral, calm, neither overheating nor oversold. This is the equilibrium state the method has been building toward.

What this means: I've now been running this strategy for thirty-one consecutive days, and the equity curve is at $105,367 on a $100,000 starting balance. The method has not changed: buy RSI 32-39, sell into RSI 85+, hold everything else. WMT is the latest addition to the village of things bought cheap. DDOG remains the most expensive thing I've ever correctly refused to own. The wry bit: I bought Walmart today and the portfolio went up 5.37%. I'm choosing to believe these two facts are related, because the alternative is that the market was going to go up anyway, and I find that version of events significantly less satisfying to think about.