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Welcome to the Fletcher Friday Report. Today is Friday, July 31st, 2026. We will look at Fletcher compared to the SP 500. Fletcher is an investing algorithm I created to deliver simple monthly signals to subscribers. It's been a week of ups and downs, to put it mildly, so let's get started. Here we are again with what has felt like a crazy week. I guess not felt like it actually was a crazy week. Yesterday I kind of had a half laugh, half cry, so I sent my brother a text with a crazy roller coaster meme. That's the way it's felt for me. This week has really tested my conviction with Fletcher and my portfolio overall. More on that in a minute. I like to watch YouTube a little bit and some TV, telecasts. And Charles Payne is someone on the Fox Business Network, and I always think he's kind of got a reasonable perspective on things. He has a recurring guest by the name of Nancy Tangler, and I hope I have your name right, Nancy. She comes from a firm that has an office here in Nashville called Tangler Laffer. And you might recognize the Laffer name, Art Laffer, who worked under Reagan. He's also known for the Laffer curve. He's also a Nashville guy, so look him up. Anyway, I believe it's his son that is business partners with Nancy. Back to Nancy and what she was saying on the Fox interview with Charles Pain. She said, We're going to make mistakes. The goal is to be mostly right. I really identify with that mostly right sentiment. So how does that relate to Fletcher? I've shared in the past about Fletcher and the signals and how two out of three of the signals are positive. And so I got to digging a little bit. And with the back testing back to 2018, the average positive monthly signal with Fletcher is 17%. The average negative is negative 10%. So that qualifies for mostly right. So what does that mean from a net result standpoint? Again, using the back testing back to 2018, the monthly average return is 7%. Yeah, that's monthly, not annual, monthly return of 7%. I would say that qualifies for mostly right. Even with the results of a week July, this is still a great average. Let's take a minute to look at Fletcher's actual performance. This week, Fletcher was down almost 9%, and the S P stayed steady, roughly about 1%. For the month, Fletcher is down almost 26%. The SP is basically flat. Year to date, Fletcher's at 126%, and the SP is at 9%. I always like to reiterate when I'm sharing these numbers that these are all very short term, and short term is not a good judge. I would say for most investing systems, Fletcher included. I consider one month short term. For Fletcher, one year can be short term as well when looking at volatile years. I'm working on a report that I'll share in the future looking at the performance of Fletcher over six, twelve, and twenty four months. Those are more reasonable terms, in my opinion. Last week I mentioned all the adjectives the press was putting in the headlines. I think they're adjectives, maybe they're verbs. Either way, what seems like hyper reaction to the market, terms like tumble and slaughter. This week, I think some adjectives and even some expletives might be warranted. Volatility, I would say that would be the word for the week. This week, Fletcher and my other investments were very volatile and got me thinking about words like tumble and slaughter. And then yesterday came in with this huge surge and surprise. So I guess that's back to volatility, right? My overall portfolio experienced an 18% swing this week. Talk about testing my conviction. How's your conviction holding up in this market? How about your portfolio? This week has been a good personal test for me. My plan to stick with Fletcher, trying to keep the daily and weekly swings in context, maintaining a broader long-term perspective. I thought it'd be fun to share somewhat of a sad example of my conviction or lack thereof from the past. I was sharing with someone this week how I got anxious with Amazon with all the ups and downs. This was in 1998. I had purchased Amazon stock in the latter part of '98. And later in the year, because I just didn't have the stomach for the roller coaster, I sold it. For context, $1,000 back then, with the gains and splits and everything that Amazon has gone through, would be $200,000 today. Yes, that's 28 years ago, but that lesson of patience still applies. Investing and conviction is a bit of a discipline, and no one said it would be easy. As usual, I like to bring up some of my conversations from the week to these Friday reports. There's a little bit of an overlap this week between a conversation I was having and some of the interactions I was having on Reddit. The recurring theme was catching up. So what is catching up? Basically, for me, it's been feeling behind in my retirement account. So I can definitely relate. I've had various personal circumstances over the years. Having multiple businesses as an entrepreneur, some years I could contribute to my IRAs, other years we couldn't. In fact, one year I actually had to take money out. Today I'm 59 and still feel the need to increase that portfolio for my retirement and to do it in an accelerated fashion. So catching up is definitely on my mind. I'm also trying to be careful about managing risk along the way, being careful about volatility in what I'm investing in. I'm using Fletcher as a large part of my plan to help me catch up. My confidence is supported by the back testing. My personal experience with Fletcher since January is also helping my conviction. And I've committed about a third of my portfolio to Fletcher. What about you? How are you feeling? Are you needing to catch up? If so, what are you doing to accelerate your gains? Let me know. That'll do it for this week. Thank you for listening today. Next week we'll have new signals for August on Monday. I'm looking forward to what I hope will be a positive August for Fletcher and for you as well. To learn more about Fletcher signals, go to FletcherInvestor.com. Have a great week and let's connect again next Friday.