The Neocon Chickenhawks Are At It Again

Neocon Pundit Fails Upward

I was in a good mood on Wednesday night--a stock I had bought the previous day closed up nearly 23% on the day. More on that below, but first, let me tell you about the neocon chickenhawk who spoiled my mood last night. 

Jonah Goldberg of The National Review was, you may recall, one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Iraq War 22 years ago. For example, in this piece from April of 2002, Bagdad Delenda Est, while acknowledging that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, Goldberg nevertheless argued for invading Iraq: 

WHY IRAQ?
So how does all this, or the humble attempt at a history lesson of my last column, justify tearing down the Baghdad regime? Well, I’ve long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the “Ledeen Doctrine.” I’m not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” That’s at least how I remember Michael phrasing it at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about a decade ago (Ledeen is one of the most entertaining public speakers I’ve ever heard, by the way).

I'm sure it won't surprise you that Jonah Goldberg is an anti-Russia hawk today (as are his friends at the American Enterprise Institute). I don't seek out Jonah Goldberg's thoughts, as I don't find them valuable, and my personal account has been blocked by him on X for years. Nevertheless, I had the misfortune of seeing one of his comments last night. I have a "Market Watchers' list on X of about a hundred finance accounts I track. One of the people on my list is the hedge fund manager Clifford Asness, and he re-posted this Jonah Goldberg post, so it ended up in my feed. 

The Real Dupe There

As you might expect from an Iraq War hawk turned Ukraine War hawk, Goldberg isn't strong on self-awareness. The real dupe there was him. He credulously commented on a cherry-picked quote by a Ukrainian WSJ reporter. Here's the full Putin quote: 

For us to hold negotiations now just because they are running out of ammunition would be ridiculous. Nevertheless, we are open to a serious discussion, and we are eager to resolve all conflicts, especially this one, by peaceful means.

You can find the English translation of the full Putin interview here--and Goldberg could have too, had he not been as credulous about a Ukrainian's post as he was about arguments for invading Iraq 22 years ago. Live and learn (or live and don't learn, if you're Goldberg). 

Let me restore my positive mood by telling you about that stock that spiked on Wednesday. 

The Stock That Spiked

The stock that spiked on Wednesday was the CleanSpark (CLSK), a bitcoin miner.

CleanSpark was one of the Portfolio Armor web app's top ten names last Thursday. Our core strategy is to buy equal dollar amounts of those top ten names, put trailing stops of 10%-15% on them, and replace them with names from the current week’s top ten when we get stopped out of a position. Last week, I got stopped out of one of my top names, so I put in a limit order to buy CLSK last Friday. 

That order filled at $15.14 on Wednesday, so it was nice to see the stock pop the next day. 

Continued Strong Gains From Our Top Names

We post the performance of each of our weekly top ten names cohorts on our website six months after we share them with our subscribers, so the final performance of our September 21st cohort will be on our site tonight. Here's a sneak peak of its performance as of yesterday's close though: our top ten names were up 47% on average, versus up 21.14% for SPY. 

If you want a heads up when we post this week's top ten tonight, feel free to subscribe to our trading Substack/occasional email list below. 

If You Want To Stay In Touch

You can scan for optimal hedges for individual securities, find our current top ten names, and create hedged portfolios on our website. You can also follow Portfolio Armor on X here, or become a free subscriber to our trading Substack using the link below (we're using that for our occasional emails now).