Performance Report: 11/30/2025
All performance data for our strategies is net of all fees and expenses. All performance data for indexes or other securities is from sources we believe to be reliable. All data is as of 11/30/2025.
Investment Strategy
MAP - Full ($500k+)
MAP - Plus
MAP - Balanced
S&P 500 Index2
Mod Alloc(AOM)2
Growth Alloc (AOR)2
Nov Return
2.1%
4.5%
1.3%
0.1%
0.5%
0.5%
YTD
30.8%
N/A
N/A
16.3%
12.4%
16.0%
Inception1
94.3%
N/A
N/A
132.7%
47.4%
67.4%
Sortino3
1.16
N/A
N/A
0.84
0.55
0.68
(Disclosure: We added performance figures for our new strategies solely on a month-to-month basis as any prior data will be inconsistent and potentially misleading. We will post continuous data for our full-size MAP Strategy since its inception on 5/1/2019. We use AOM and AOR as our benchmarks as they are low-cost index funds that model the exposure of the majority of retail investors. Our risk measures are aligned closely with these funds. It is important to note that individual account performance varies and your account may perform better or worse than its model. The model's performance is simply the average performance of all accounts participating in the model.)
Performance Update
November was another really good month for us. We handily beat the indexes and saw our risk-adjusted numbers improve. Our MAP-Plus strategy saw a big bump which is encouraging. I started this strategy just this year as we had an influx of younger clients come over with Garrett. It took me a bit to figure out how to effectively manage the strategy but it is now coming together. I'm managing six strategies across three platforms so it took me a minute to master how to juggle them all. This month was an ideal result with each strategy performing inline with its risk profile.
Our performance this month can be tied to what I wrote in last month's update:
We are entering the most bullish season of the year. The period between Thanksgiving through the last of the 12 days of Christmas (Jan 5th) tends to provide strong returns for the S&P 500. So, while the long-term prospects for US equities is dire, the short-term could be promising. Thus, equities are in a terribly odd place at this moment in time with such a terrific disparity between the long and short-term outlooks.
And right on time, the week of Thanksgiving, the stock market started moving higher and I was able to position us to benefit. I had closed much of our exposure in September and October as I was concerned the stock market was vulnerable. Rather than falling, the market see-sawed back and forth. As we started to approach the beginning of the "Santa Claus Rally" window, I started adding exposure. The S&P 500 had established a "double bottom" which has provided us with a really nice support level and an attractive risk-reward proposition.
At the moment, we aren't heavily invested in "high-beta named" (i.e. those strongly correlated with the S&P 500), but we do have positions in a half dozen stocks that should go up if the stock market appreciates further. And I'm liable to add a few more if the S&P 500 exhibits additional positive momentum throughout the month.
Market Commentary
To reiterate my comments from last month, the stock market is in a terribly odd spot. The fundamentals are dire, the technical landscape is bearish, my MAP system is painting a negative picture for the prospect of US equities, yet, I've somehow concluded that stocks should be up for at least the next month or so.
I base my thesis on a couple of items: First, seasonality is strongly bullish which I've alluded to. Second, when stock market indexes defy market technicals, the technicals can turn into a contrarian signal - at least for the short-term. The technicals have certainly been bearish, that's not debatable. "Technicals" is simply a term used by market professionals who use various tools to measure the behavior/sentiment of the totality of market participants. Its akin to election polling so we have a decent idea of who is likely going to win prior to the actual election. The current "stock market polling" says stocks should go down, but they aren't.
When the stock market deviates from the technicals, investors who rely on those technical indicators are forced to reverse their positions. And in times like these, the technicals fail to serve as a confirming indicator and rather become a contrarian indicator. I believe we are at such a moment in time. Long-term, the technicals are pessimistic and I woudln't want to be locked in to the stock market for the next 12 - 24 months. But in the short-term, I'm growing confident prices should rise. And if I'm wrong, we have that very convenient stop level in the S&P 500 to fall back on.
The timing of the stock market rally last week couldn't have been more apropos. September through October is the most bearish time of the year and that negative sentiment carried over into November. For a period of eight weeks from mid-September until mid-November, the stock market whipsawed back and forth eventually falling 5% from its peak. But as soon as they hung the Christmas lights on the Burnet Square, the Santa Claus Rally came into view and, voila, the stock market started to rebound recovering nearly all its losses.
In addition to the seasonality effect, there is a host of other potentially bullish developments. There has been a truce called in Gaza and there is hope for one in Ukraine as well. Year-over-year inflation is softening approaching the FED's 2% target. (I don't agree with measuring inflation year-over-year but no one at the FED asked my opinion, and that's how they like to do it.) The FED will meet next week and there will be further dissent among voting members tilting the Board towards a more dovish stance (i.e. prone to more money printing which is good for equities). All of these factors should keep funds flowing into US equities.
One sidenote, I am curious to see if it develops is how specific stocks perform this month due to tax-loss harvesting. I don't remember a time when there was such an incredible divergence between the performance of various individual stocks. AI, defense, and a handful of healthcare companies have all done incredibly well in 2025. However, the majority of large-cap index components have not. The equal-weighted S&P 500 index is up just 10.7% YTD, whereas the cap-weighted S&P 500 is up 16.3%. Which means if you remove a few of the larger names like AMZN, NVDA, META, and GOOG, the stock market hasn't performed all that well this year. Throughout December, nearly all market participants engage in some form of "tax-loss harvesting" which means selling losing positions in order to realize a tax loss while maintaining your unrealized profits to defer taxes on those positions. I'm interested to see if underperforming names which are already down this year may see more bleeding as investors harvest tax losses.
Lastly, I want to touch on the hottest sector in the capital markets; gold and silver. Despite their impressive YTD gains, precious metals seem poised for even more gains. Since peaking in mid-October, they have formed a very bullish base. Typically, corrections follow something called an A-B-C pattern where there is a large drop on heavy volume, a modest recovery, then followed by another large drop but on much lighter volume. Daily volume should continue to decline throughout the correction. However, sometimes, the C-wave "truncates" meaning the price doesn't move below the initial decline. When this takes place, the ensuing bullish move can be rather large (think tech stocks in 1999 or AI stocks in late 2023). At this time, it appears the C-wave in the silver correction has truncated and now silver is exploding higher on impressive volume. In addition to silver, several PM mining stocks have duplicated silver's impressive price gains. Gold is lagging its more volatile peers but that is not of too much concern unless the November lows in gold are breached. As of now, it appears "all systems go" for gold and silver.
Conclusion
As we transition from Thanksgiving into the Christmas season, I continue to give thanks for so many things. Not the least of which is how blessed we are to experience the gains we have enjoyed this year. Anytime you can clock an annual gain of 30% or more, it makes the long-term impact of compounding far more impressive.
I am also thankful for your trust in our firm and we will all do everything we can to continually earn it. And finally, I'm grateful for the addition of Garrett and Sam which have provided a needed balance for the firm and added a large dose of vigor to my professional life.
We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
As always, please don't hesitate to call us at 512-553-5151 if we can be of any assistance.
Best,
Matt McCracken
1) Inception date of 4/30/2019
2) All benchmark prices and returns are obtained through IBKR's PortfolioAnalyst reporting tool. S&P 500 Index is calculated using the index price. AOM is the iShares Core 40/60 Moderate Allocation ETF. AOR is the iShares Core 60/40 Balanced Allocation ETF. These benchmarks were chosen as they represent the prevailing investment strategies of retail advisors.
3) The Sortino ratio is a commonly used measure of "alpha" or the value a manager adds to a portfolio. It is similar to the Sharpe ratio. The Sortino ratio does emphasize the negative impact of downside volatility more than the Sharpe ratio which is why we use it as our primary measure of alpha.