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I need help with my own investing discipline or lack thereof. A watch pot never boils. Can you relate? Welcome to the Fletcher Friday report. Today is Friday, August 7th, 2026. Fletcher is a rules-based investing system I created to deliver simple monthly signals, buy, hold, and sell. Signals for subscribers. We will look at Fletcher compared to the SP 500 today. It's been an action-packed week with earnings and market reactions, so let's get going. Yes, this week has been full and packed with earnings reports. How full, you might ask? Almost 400 businesses from the SP this week have reported earnings. And of those, about 75% beat expectations. Companies beating expectations included Caterpillar, Palantir, AMD, Pfizer, Disney, and that's just to name a few. And it all sounds like good news, or is it? It's interesting how the market has reacted. I don't really understand how earnings and market reaction are correlated. I've tried to understand over the years, but it's just not something that's in my wheelhouse. How does a company beat expectations and then take an immediate 5% drop? I had a conversation with a subscriber this week, and he was asking me if I've ever invested based on earnings and the timing of that. The answer is yes, but I've failed miserably. So it's not something I count on. It's not something I understand necessarily. And honestly, I think a lot of it is stuff that is beyond what we can calculate. It's the market sentiment, it's Mr. Market if you know who he is. And it's just the nature of all the different variables running at the same time. Like a quote from Warren Buffett, it's something to the nature of if you understand the variables, then you can time the market. The problem is we just don't know all the variables. The way the market reacts to all the earnings and such is just reiterating my sentiment overall. And what I'm seeing in the headlines seems to be the same contradictory information. I kid you not, there were two headlines that were right next to each other. One of them said AMD stock is tanking after earnings. And the other headline was AMD earnings reveal an ultra bullish future. This is why I can't do stock picking on my own. Let's go ahead and look at some numbers for Fletcher and the SP. For the week, based on closing price from last Friday, Fletcher is up 5% and the SP is up over 3%. From the first of the month, which would be Monday, we had new signals on Monday. So Fletcher is up 2%, and the SP is up 2% as well. Year to date, Fletcher is up 129%, and the SP is up 13%. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, and I always say that short term isn't a good judge for Fletcher. And honestly, it's not a good judge for the SP either. I've been doing some performance reporting. Now that we have live data from January 1st, it makes these numbers a little bit more palatable. We do still have backtesting going back to 2018. If we put a pin in July 31st and look back 12 months, Fletcher has performed at an annual rate of 366%. I said that right, 366%. Granted, we've had an amazing bull market, but that's an amazing return. Over a 24-month period, 1,156%. That's looking back 24 months from July 31st going back. Granted, some of that is back testing, but that's still an impressive number. I have more in-depth numbers and I'm working through those. And if there's something you'd like to see in a report, let me know. I do have a report that I'd be happy to send you if you want to contact me through the website, and it'll have more information about best month, worst month, best 12 months, worst 12 months, that sort of thing. I love to create reports, so don't be shy about asking for additional information if you like. Monday was the first trading day of the month, so we did have Fletcher signals. After executing the signals for my own portfolio on Monday, I sent a text out to a few of my family members who are also doing the Fletcher system. And I told them, now we just let it bake. And the idea is to just not touch it, not worry about it, just let it be. My brother texted back, and his quote was, You can't microwave a brisket. Being from Texas and loving barbecue, that wouldn't hit home for me. And then there's my unending curiosity of how the market and Fletcher are doing on a day-to-day basis. And confession, I'm checking on it throughout the day, which really doesn't matter. It's just more of a curiosity. But it got me thinking about how a watched pot never boils. All of these are good illustrations for how Fletcher operates. We need to basically do the first of the month rebalance and relax. And it takes the pressure off of watching it throughout the week or the month, even though I do out of my own curiosity. That'll do it for this week. Thank you for listening. I'm looking forward to what August will hold for all of us. To learn more about the Fletcher signals, go to Fletcherinvestor.com. Have a great week and check in with me again next Friday.