Friday Fletcher Report — May 15, 2026

Happy Friday! Welcome back to another edition of the Fletcher Report.

For those just joining us: Fletcher is an algorithm I built because I got tired of two things — the overwhelming pile of "investing data tools" out there, and my own emotions hijacking my investment decisions. So instead of white-knuckling my way through every market swing, I let Fletcher do the deciding. Once a month, it sends me a report with clear signals: buy, sell, or hold. It never recommends more than six holdings at a time — sometimes it's three, sometimes four. The mission is simple but ambitious: beat the S&P 500, and not by a hair. By a lot.

A quick reminder of who I am, since it matters here: I'm Kyle, just an individual investor sharing my own experience. I am not a financial advisor, and nothing here should be taken as financial advice. I'm also not a data junkie — I don't have the time or the bandwidth to dig into spreadsheets all day. That's exactly why I built Fletcher to do the heavy thinking for me. (For the record, no AI involved — yet. That might change down the road.)

Back on January 1st, I put about a third of my portfolio behind Fletcher's decisions, using my own real money. These Friday reports are how you and I get to watch that experiment play out together — the good, the bad, and the occasionally ugly. Down the line, I'll start stacking Fletcher up against other indexes too, so if there's one you'd like to see in the mix, send it my way. One housekeeping note: this report itself doesn't include any buy/sell signals — those live behind the subscription. This is just the scoreboard.

So, How'd We Do This Week?

Short answer: a bit of a breather. After last week's eye-popping 22% gain, Fletcher cooled off with a 7% pullback this week. It's been a choppier stretch in the market generally, and it's been two weeks since our last signal (that one landed on May 1st). Honestly, after a jump like last week's, some give-back felt almost inevitable.

Here's how the numbers shake out:

- This week: Fletcher -7%, S&P roughly flat

- Since the last signal (May 1st): Fletcher +13%, S&P +3%

- Year to date: Fletcher ~143%, S&P ~8%

A Little Market Déjà Vu

Between last week's surge and this week's dip, the financial headlines have been working overtime. I'll admit I watch the news mostly for entertainment rather than letting it steer my decisions — and lately there's been no shortage of comparisons to the old dot-com bust. (Curious where you all get your market news, by the way — I bounce between Yahoo Finance and a rotating cast of YouTube finance channels.)

Funny enough, I actually lived through that dot-com era firsthand. I was running a small internet company at the time — bootstrapped, no leverage, slow and steady growth. We actually came out ahead during the "dot bomb," picking up customers whose hosting providers had gone under. It was a wild time for digital business — lots of new activity, trades happening faster than ever, and yes, more than a few pump-and-dump schemes floating around.

Back then, my friends and I tracked stocks the old-fashioned way: mostly hearsay, zero real analysis. One story still makes me laugh — I needed to buy a car, so I sold off a stock that had just had a massive run-up. Turns out, if I'd held on just a few more months, I wouldn't have been shopping for a car. I'd have been shopping for a bicycle. That's how dramatic the swing was.

Answering a Few Reader Questions

"How volatile is Fletcher, really?"

More volatile than the S&P 500, no question. We're talking three to six stocks at a time versus the S&P's 500-plus. Less diversification naturally means more bumps along the way. But I see that volatility as the trade-off for the upside — more risk, more potential reward. It's exactly that risk/reward profile that's let Fletcher outperform the S&P in our backtesting.

"What kind of stocks does Fletcher actually pick?"

All publicly traded, U.S.-based companies — typically $20 billion or larger, financially strong, liquid, and profitable. Some names you'll probably recognize from past signals: Carvana, Robinhood, Starbucks, Tesla, Meta, Palantir, and even Nvidia.

That's a wrap for this week's report. Thanks, as always, for following along. Got questions? Send them my way. And if you want to dig deeper into how Fletcher works, head over to [FletcherInvestor.com].

Have a great week, and I'll see you back here next Friday.