QAV Weekly Update 2026-05-08

Hi folks, The All Ordi­nar­ies post­ed a sol­id 2.47% gain over the five-day peri­od, climb­ing from around 8,700 to close near 9,107, despite the RBA rais­ing inter­est rates again and the ongo­ing U.S. morass in the Mid­dle East. But the AFR is pre­dict­ing it will drop again today. US mar­kets also extend­ed their strong momen­tum over the past five trad­ing days, with the S&P 500 climb­ing approx­i­mate­ly 1.78% to close near 7,337. So, let’s get into my week­ly updates and see where we are at. All the Best, Cam

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QAV MYTH KILLERS

AVERAGE DOWN ON LOSERS

There’s a piece of val­ue-invest­ing folk­lore that goes like this: if you’ve done your home­work and the price drops after you buy, that’s a gift. Buy more. Low­er your aver­age cost. Dou­ble down on your con­vic­tion. The fun­da­men­tals haven’t changed. At a cer­tain lev­el, sure, it makes sense. But more often than not, we think it’s an ego trade dressed up as analy­sis. Maybe if you’re War­ren Buf­fett or Char­lie Munger, and you’ve spent 500 hours read­ing every­thing there is to read about a busi­ness, its sec­tor, and its com­peti­tors, you’ve earned that lev­el of con­vic­tion. But who has time for that? The right ques­tion is nev­er “is this cheap­er than I paid?” It’s “would I buy this today if I owned no shares?” Those are very dif­fer­ent ques­tions. The first one is about defend­ing a deci­sion you already made. The sec­ond one is about whether the deci­sion still makes sense right now. One of the rea­sons we use a sen­ti­ment chart (the 3PTL) to guide our invest­ing is that we accept we can nev­er know every­thing there is to know about a com­pa­ny and its short-term future. We rely on his­tor­i­cal finan­cials. But there are peo­ple out there who know far more about the busi­ness than we ever will — ana­lysts who cov­er the sec­tor, peo­ple who work in the com­pa­ny, its sup­pli­ers, its com­peti­tors. They have insights we can’t pos­si­bly match. If the mar­ket is sell­ing a busi­ness down, maybe there’s a good rea­son. Maybe there isn’t. Either way, we’re not will­ing to bet our house on which it is. So we err on the side of cau­tion. Even if our fun­da­men­tal analy­sis says the stock is under­val­ued, if sen­ti­ment has turned against it, we sit on our hands and wait for the trend to reverse. That’s true whether or not we already own it. We have a few guards built into the sys­tem. The first is sen­ti­ment-based sell trig­gers, with a lay­er of “trou­ble at the mill” red flags on top. The sec­ond is the Josephine trig­ger (“not tonight, Josephine”) that stops us from buy­ing some­thing while we wait for the sen­ti­ment to turn around. And the third, above all, is Rule 1: a hard 20% stop. If a stock falls 20% from its buy price, it’s gone. The losers don’t stay in the port­fo­lio long enough for aver­ag­ing down to even become a temp­ta­tion. Because if a share price is head­ing in the wrong direc­tion, you have no idea how long it’s going to con­tin­ue. Months. Years. Maybe for­ev­er. CSL is a stock a lot of peo­ple have been groan­ing about over the years. It had a great run, peaked just before COVID in Feb­ru­ary 2020 at $320, and then drift­ed between $320 and $248 for four years. In August 2024 it began a slide that has con­tin­ued to today, with the share price now south of $124. There were plen­ty of peo­ple in the Aus­tralian invest­ing media plug­ging the hell out of CSL for the last six years. Buy the dip. Aver­age down. The fun­da­men­tals haven’t changed. We thought it was over­val­ued at the time and stayed clear. We admire CSL as a busi­ness, of course. But it’s a text­book exam­ple of why you should­n’t keep buy­ing some­thing regard­less of val­u­a­tion and regard­less of sen­ti­ment. You don’t need con­vic­tion in your picks. You need a sys­tem that does­n’t care if you have any. Put your con­vic­tion in your SYSTEM, not in your ego.

STOCK ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

I added one stock to the Light port­fo­lios this week and you can see my Light posts here. I also added some­thing to the U.S. Light port­fo­lio this week. U.S. Light and Club mem­bers can read about it here. On the full Aus­tralian pod­cast this week, Tony did a deep dive on KAU. See the pod­cast link down below if you want to lis­ten to his analy­sis.

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BUY LIST

Each week, we pro­duce a buy list based on our val­ue invest­ing sys­tem that we share with our QAV Club mem­bers. The intend­ed pri­ma­ry pur­pose of this buy list is for club mem­bers to use as a ref­er­ence for com­par­ing their own buy list. In the­o­ry, all of our buy lists should look pret­ty sim­i­lar each week. QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List (AU) 2026-05-03 Below is a link to the US list for this week (avail­able exclu­sive­ly to our U.S. Club mem­bers): QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List 2026-05-04

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PORTFOLIOS

We com­pare our per­for­mance to what we think is the most rel­e­vant bench­mark (SPDR 200 in Aus­tralia, S&P500 in the USA), but if you’re new to invest­ing, these com­par­isons might not mean much. Instead, you can com­pare our per­for­mance to the top-per­form­ing Super Funds in Aus­tralia and see why an ama­teur active investor (who has a sys­tem to fol­low) can out-per­form most of the “pro­fes­sion­als”.

AUSTRALIAN

QAV DUMMY

Five Year Report: Over the last 5 years, the QAV AU port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly 14.06%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark returned around 8.64%. Month­ly Report: Over the past 30 days, the QAV AU port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly ‑2.0%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark fell around ‑0.8%. No changes to our port­fo­lio this week. For FY26: Over the finan­cial year to date, the QAV AU port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly 17.89%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark gained around 7.57%.

QAV LIGHT

Financial Year to Date

Over the finan­cial year to date, the QAV AU Light port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly 28.4%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark gained around 7.6%.

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Last 30 Days

Over the past 30 days, the QAV AU Light port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly 1.3%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark fell around ‑0.8%.

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Last 12 Months

Over the last 12 months, the QAV AU Light port­fo­lio deliv­ered a return of approx­i­mate­ly 31.5%, while the ASX 200 bench­mark returned around 13.0%.

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Become a QAV Light Member today and start your investing on the right track

If you want to find out what we’re trad­ing in QAV Light each week, sign up to become a mem­ber. You’ll get an email from me every Mon­day let­ting you know what we’re buy­ing and sell­ing in that port­fo­lio. You can choose to copy our trades or not. It’s the eas­i­est way to start your rules-based invest­ing career… and you don’t even need to know the rules. I’ll fol­low the rules for you. It’s a good first step to even­tu­al­ly becom­ing a QAV Club mem­ber and learn­ing how to run the sys­tem by your­self. QAV LIGHT: We know where to drop your line. (Note: Amer­i­cans inter­est­ed in join­ing QAV Light or Club please go here instead.)

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AMERICAN

QAV DUMMY

Since incep­tion (Sep 2023), our port­fo­lio is +125% vs the S&P 500 +65%. Over the last 30 days our port­fo­lio is +15% vs the S&P 500 +11%. No trades this week.

QAV LIGHT

Since incep­tion (Dec 2025), our port­fo­lio is +11% vs the S&P 500 +6.65%. Over the last 30 days our port­fo­lio is +6.59% vs the S&P 500 +11%.

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THIS WEEK’S EPISODES

Five Juicy Years: Gold, Oil, and the Art of Say­ing No – QAV AU #918 The Haus­bank That Came In From The Cold (DB) – QAV Amer­i­ca #51

STOCK NEWS AND UPDATES

COMMODITIES

This week the big changes to com­modi­ties were the fol­low­ing:

Com­mod­i­ty	Sta­tus
Gold (USD)	JOSEPHINE
Coal (cok­ing)	BUY
Plat­inum	JOSEPHINE
WTI Crude	BUY

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

SIGNING OFF

Hope every­one’s hav­ing a rip­per week! Our deep dives into KAU and DB this week should give you plen­ty to chew on — remem­ber, the best oppor­tu­ni­ties often hide in plain sight when the mar­ket’s not pay­ing atten­tion. Keep doing the work, stick to the check­list, and let the num­bers guide you through what­ev­er noise the mar­ket throws our way. SSDD!

• Cam

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That’s it for the week! QAV A GOOD SHAREMARKET! Got a ques­tion? [email protected]