The market isn’t “up” or “down” right now.

It’s splitting apart.

One corner rips higher on a single headline.

Another gets crushed on the very same day.

Stocks that used to trade like a basket are suddenly behaving like strangers. Commodities that “should” move together are diverging.

And investors are learning (again) the sober reality: there is no such thing as “the market.” There are only regimes… and risk management.

That’s why we keep a public Leaderboard.

Not as a victory lap… but as a reality check.

Because in markets like this, the only thing that matters is whether your framework survives the noise and whether your Market View keeps showing up in prices.

Here’s the updated Top 10 across our product roster, with prices through February 18:

VMF Research’s Top 10 Positions - February 18th, 2026

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A few things jump out.

First, dispersion is accelerating. Some positions kept compounding (the miners).

Some cooled off (silver).

Some quietly powered higher while the crowd stayed distracted (Korea).

Some held steady while “certainty” got repriced every week (gold).

That’s what regime-change markets do: they don’t hand out broad, easy wins. They separate narratives from fundamentals… and tourists from professionals.

Second, the leaderboard is still dominated by the same big macro pillars we’ve been writing about.

Because the world is being hit by waves of uncertainty on three fronts... and each wave is forcing capital to move fast.

One wave is geopolitical.

The “rules-based” era is cracking. Alliances are shifting. Supply chains are being redesigned with politics in mind, not efficiency. And if you’ve been following our Fourth Turning framework, none of this is surprising.

What’s surprising is how quickly it’s becoming visible in prices. In a Fourth Turning, markets stop rewarding comfort stories. They start rewarding resilience, real assets, and strategic leverage to the new order.

The second wave is liquidity.

Investors want simple answers to simple questions: Who runs the next liquidity cycle, and what do they do with the Fed’s balance sheet and the market’s plumbing?

Right now, there’s decent visibility on the first part (Kevin Warsh). But there’s far less visibility on the second. And in markets, uncertainty is often hated more than the actual bad news.

Call the next regime tighter, looser, or simply different... it doesn’t matter.

What matters is this: the future path of liquidity is becoming the only variable that truly moves the tape.

So, is it any surprise that the most liquidity-sensitive assets are the ones struggling the most? Think crypto.

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That’s why we keep hammering the same message: watch liquidity like a hawk. It’s the tide underneath everything.

And then there’s the third wave… the one gripping markets the hardest over the last week:

Disruptive innovation.

Not the buzzword version. The real version, the one where new AI models don’t just improve productivity… they change competitive moats.

This is where dispersion turns violent.

Because AI doesn’t hit “tech”, or the broader economic fabric, evenly. It hits business models. It hits pricing power. It hits labour economics. It hits distribution. It hits who owns the customer relationship. And it slashes the cost of creating “good enough” software, content, and services.

In other words, the winners won’t be “AI companies” in the abstract.

The winners will be the companies that can turn AI into margin expansion, faster innovation cycles, and durable customer lock-in… while the losers wake up to find their moat has evaporated.

That’s why our work has been so intense over the last few weeks. Because in a market like this, the only edge that matters is having a framework for uncertainty... and then translating it into positioning.

If you’re reading this outside our paywall, here’s the honest truth.

The public leaderboard shows outcomes.

Behind the paywall you’ll find what actually matters: our takes on each of these three uncertainty waves and the actionable insights that come from them, including how we’re sizing risk, where we’re taking partial profits (the “closed half at double” part), and what we believe is setting up next as dispersion keeps widening.

This is not a market for passive narratives.

It’s a market for clear thinking… and decisive action.

Good investing,
VMF

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Disclaimer: This is general information, not personalized investment advice. It’s not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Investing involves risk, and past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. Do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed/authorized professional who understands your objectives and risk profile.”