The rebalance executed. Not how I planned.

Monday June 9, I ran the rebalance. Seven sells in two days, a pile of ETF buys to redeploy the cash, and a portfolio that looks meaningfully different than it did the week before.

None of the names I said I'd sell in last week's post were among them.

What I sold

The thesis for cutting positions was the same one I've been running: names with no screener support, no conviction, and no clear next act. The execution order just didn't match the names I flagged publicly.

I sold NKE — Nike, the footwear company — at $43.50. Nike has been a drag for over a year: no screener support, eroding margins, and a brand in transition that I don't have any particular edge on. I should have moved faster. I held it through a painful drawdown waiting for a catalyst that never came.

I sold most of my KR (Kroger) position at $63.11. A retail grocery company I bought for exposure to defensive spending. The screener never picked it up and the thesis never strengthened. Clean exit.

I sold most of my BDT (Bird Construction, a Canadian industrial) position at $60.22 — near a multi-year high. Not a loss; just a name that had done what it could and no longer fit the direction I'm taking the book.

I reduced PFE (Pfizer) by roughly 98% at $25.96. That one stings. I bought Pfizer as a value play on post-COVID repricing and it has not delivered. I kept a small stub — enough to stay enrolled in the thesis without carrying meaningful risk. The Pfizer thesis is on a short leash.

I trimmed MSFT (Microsoft) by one share at $412.48. Not a conviction move — the screener still likes it (Bedrock R31, NMS 5.0) — but the position was oversized relative to where I want tech concentration after the rebalance. I'll add back on the next entry signal.

I also partially reduced RY (Royal Bank of Canada) and CNR (Canadian National Railway) — both good businesses, both slightly over-weight for the shape of portfolio I'm building. Not exits, just trims.

And GILD — Gilead Sciences — sold June 10 at $125.33. That one was covered last week. The screener flagged it for exit; I finally moved.

The cash from all seven went into ETF positions: broad Canadian equity, Canadian dividend, US equity, and bond exposure. This is the core-and-satellite model in action — I'm reducing the number of individual names and building the ETF layer wider. The individual Blue Portfolio names I keep need to earn their slot against the ETF alternative.

What I bought

The equity additions this week were all small: fractional accumulation on names I already hold.

I bought a tiny add on AEM (Agnico Eagle) and B (Barrick Mining) on Wednesday. Both are in the screener (Bedrock + Prospector), both had RSI readings below 40 heading into the week, both bounced. Gold is working this week — KGC, NEM, and AEM all up 2–5%. Not a timing move; just the weekly cadence of the book automatically reinvesting into the thesis.

Small adds on PPG Industries, Alphabet (GOOG), and McDonald's (MCD) through the week as well — these are auto-invest contributions, not active decisions.

What I'm watching

The sell list from last week — CRM, MA, and MCD — is still sitting.

CRM dropped −8.5% this week. That is two consecutive weeks of meaningful drawdown while I hold a position I've already decided to exit. The process flagged it; the market has agreed. I'm running out of excuses.

The screener this week has ADBE (Adobe) at RSI 27.5 — its lowest reading in this run, now hitting five consecutive weeks at the top of Bedrock and Prospector. The buy case is clean: Shareholder Yield 11.3%, Margin of Safety 63%, F-Score 8. The NMS score slipped to 5.0 (from 6.0 last week) which is the one soft note in an otherwise strong setup. I haven't bought it. The NMS softening is worth watching one more cycle before committing.

ACN — Accenture — showed up at Bedrock Rank 2 this week with RSI 20.5. That's the lowest RSI reading in the entire screener universe. NMS 4.0 puts it at Warming Up, not Buy-Ready, so I'm not adding. But Rank 2 with RSI at 20 is unusual and worth tracking.

Intuit (INTU) — already held — fell another −3.5% this week. RSI at 31.3, Margin of Safety at 64%, F-Score 9. It's the strongest quality-discount signal in the portfolio right now and it keeps getting cheaper. No new action — I'll accumulate when there's an RSI reversal signal, not just because the price is lower.

How the portfolio did

The Blue Portfolio finished the week up +0.65%. The adjusted number strips out the rebalance trades — the NAV curve below reflects price-only movement, not cash flowing in or out of individual positions.

The shape: a small drawdown June 9–10 as the market absorbed some volatility alongside the rebalance, a recovery through Friday June 12, a good Monday-Tuesday jump (June 15–16), then a pullback Wednesday June 17 before closing higher Thursday. The prior week's rebalance is already smoothed out of this curve.

The best performer of the week was OMAB — Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte, the Mexican airport operator — up +12.0%. No new news I caught; likely a catch-up to the broader EM rally and some Mexico-specific tailwind. OMAB is not a screener name — it's a longer-hold thesis on Mexican infrastructure and middle-class travel growth. This week it earned its spot.

The worst was CNQ — Canadian Natural Resources — down −8.6%. Oil pulled back hard this week. CNQ is a quality Canadian energy name but it has no screener support and the oil-price dependency makes it volatile. I haven't added and haven't cut. That situation needs a decision.

One thing I'd do differently

Execute the sell list in the order the process built it — not the order of least resistance.

The June 9 rebalance cleared seven names. NKE, KR, BDT, PFE, GILD, MSFT (partial), RY (partial). These were good cuts. But CRM, MA, and MCD — the three I explicitly flagged last week — are still sitting. CRM is now down roughly 18% over two weeks while I hold a position I've decided to exit.

The discipline isn't just in flagging names. It's in executing them in the order the reasoning says to, not the order that feels easiest. I cleared the easier cuts first. The harder ones are now more expensive to hold.

If you're doing a rebalance

When you're running a rebalance, the sell list doesn't close on a schedule — it closes when the last name is gone. Partial execution is fine. Calling it done before it's done isn't.

— Mark