The Destroyer of Moats — QAV Weekly Update 2026-10-23

Hi QAVVERS,

I don’t have much to report except that it’s been flood­ing in Bris­bane, so kung fu was­n’t on last night.

AUSTRALIAN MARKET UPDATE

The All Ordi­nar­ies rose 0.54% over the five trad­ing ses­sions to Thurs­day 22 Octo­ber 2026, clos­ing at 8,917.10:

• 15 Octo­ber: The ABS released its Sep­tem­ber 2026 Labour Force data on 15 Octo­ber, show­ing the sea­son­al­ly adjust­ed unem­ploy­ment rate rose 0.1 per­cent­age point to 4.7 per cent, with the employ­ment-to-pop­u­la­tion ratio falling 0.3 per­cent­age points to 63.6 per cent.
• 21 Octo­ber: Data cen­tre oper­a­tor NextDC (ASX: NXT) closed down 41.7 per cent on 21 Octo­ber after cut­ting its FY27 net rev­enue guid­ance by rough­ly a third to $475,500 mil­lion and plac­ing all new devel­op­ment projects on hold, after elec­tric­i­ty dis­trib­u­tor Jeme­na sus­pend­ed grid upgrade works at its M3 data cen­tre in West Footscray due to com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion and local coun­cil plan­ning require­ments, with Jeme­na not expect­ing to resume before Feb­ru­ary 2027.
• 22 Octo­ber: Fur­ni­ture retail­er Nick Scali (ASX: NCK) fell about 15 per cent on 22 Octo­ber after issu­ing a trad­ing update fore­cast­ing under­ly­ing group net prof­it of $28,32 mil­lion for the six months to 31 Decem­ber 2026, rough­ly 20 per cent below mar­ket expec­ta­tions and down from $41 mil­lion in the same peri­od a year ear­li­er, with the com­pa­ny cit­ing an 11,14 per cent year-on-year drop in ANZ first-half rev­enue and weak­er con­sumer demand linked to the hous­ing mar­ket slow­down. I won­der how con­fi­dent those “I’m just going to buy and hold NCK for­ev­er” folks (you know who you are) are feel­ing at the moment? Good luck to you.

US MARKET UPDATE

The S&P 500 fell 1.04% over the five trad­ing ses­sions to Thurs­day 22 Octo­ber 2026, clos­ing at 7,663.43:

• 16 Octo­ber: US indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion rose 0.7% in Sep­tem­ber, fol­low­ing a 0.1% increase in August. Man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put rose 0.3%, accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Reserve.
• 21 Octo­ber: The S&P 500 rose 0.58% to 7,757.17 on Wednes­day, extend­ing its gains from Mon­day and Tues­day.
• 21 Octo­ber: Meta report­ed quar­ter­ly rev­enue of $64.60 bil­lion, up 26% on a year ear­li­er. Its own results showed $34.91 bil­lion in cap­i­tal expen­di­ture and neg­a­tive free cash flow of $2.12 bil­lion.
• 22 Octo­ber: Tech­nol­o­gy shares sold off on Thurs­day. The Nas­daq fell 2.6% and the S&P 500 lost 1.2%, while the Dow fin­ished rough­ly flat.

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

The Destroyer of Moats

On a recent Cae­sar pod­cast I was talk­ing about the Roman siege against Masa­da in 73 C.E. and, of course, it remind­ed me of val­ue invest­ing.

Read the full arti­cle →

STOCK ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

Aus­tralian Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Aus­tralian Light port­fo­lios this week.

Amer­i­can Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Amer­i­can Light port­fo­lios this week.

Tony did a Pulled Pork on Adrad Hold­ings (AHL) this week, a cen­tu­ry-old Aus­tralian radi­a­tor busi­ness now sup­ply­ing cool­ing sys­tems for data cen­tres, EV charg­ing infra­struc­ture, and Fortes­cue’s elec­tric min­ing fleet. Full details in the pod­cast below.

This week on the Amer­i­can pod­cast I did a pulled pork on Bloomin’ Brands (BLMN), the casu­al din­ing com­pa­ny behind Out­back Steak­house, and found it cheap for some pret­ty good rea­sons includ­ing col­laps­ing mar­gins and falling guest vis­its. Check out the full analy­sis via the pod­cast link below.

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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.

AUSTRALIAN BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List (AU) 2026-10-17

U.S. BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List 2026-10-19

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PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE

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”.

We pub­lish a fresh per­for­mance snap­shot once a month. Week­ly noise does­n’t tell you much in a val­ue-invest­ing sys­tem — what mat­ters is the trend.

Octo­ber 2026 per­for­mance snap­shot.

Aus­tralian Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

Amer­i­can Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

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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: Some­one already cleared the way.

(Note: Amer­i­cans inter­est­ed in join­ing QAV Light or Club please go here instead.)

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Add QAV America — US stocks, the same QAV method

Already a QAV mem­ber? You can add QAV Amer­i­ca as your sec­ond mem­ber­ship at 50% off — US-list­ed stocks, the same QAV approach, billed in AUD through this site (just one pay­ment to keep an eye on). Add QAV Amer­i­ca →

Not a QAV mem­ber yet? Join QAV first, then you can add QAV Amer­i­ca at the 50% mem­ber rate.

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THIS WEEK’S EPISODES

Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Fox: QAV AU #952

Bloomin’ Hor­ri­ble: QAV Amer­i­ca #75

STOCK NEWS AND UPDATES

COMMODITIES

This week the big changes to com­modi­ties were the fol­low­ing:

Com­mod­i­ty	Sta­tus
Gold (USD)	JOSEPHINE

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

SIGNING OFF

SSDD!

• Cam

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That’s it for the week!

QAV A GOOD SHAREMARKET!

Got a ques­tion? [email protected]