Title: Portfolio Update — Four-stock Edition Show: Haymaker (Substack) Author: David Hay / The Haymaker Team Date: 2026-08-24 (AUG 24, 2026) URL: https://haymaker.substack.com/p/portfolio-update-67e Note: Written post — no timestamps. Paid post; body captured via Stephen's logged-in session. Verbatim body below (disclosures omitted).
Hello, Haymakers:
In today's Portfolio Update we are covering four stocks. As a result, each note on these will be quasi-tweets, or whatever those are called these days. Per the following detail, three are winners and one is a loser. Coincidentally, that's about the hit vs miss rate our picks have had overall since 2022.
EOG Resources (EOG)
As alert readers realize, we have been opining that EOG would experience an upside range expansion or breakout. Actually, per the red line below, it did that relative to shorter-term resistance late last year. Then, this month, it broke above overhead resistance extending back to the powerful energy sector rally during the early stages of Russia's attack on Ukraine. It is fair to note, however, that this is not yet decisive; our speculation is that it will soon be confirmed by a continuing surge above the upper $140s where it had previously hit the wall or, more accurately, the ceiling.
Five-Year Price Chart (overhead resistance lines displayed) [Bloomberg]
Back on June 17th, we gave EOG a vehement endorsement, one that has been rewarded. It has popped from $133 at that point to $151 today, over six times greater than the return on the S&P over that timeframe.
Irrespective of this surge, the valuation metrics for EOG remain extremely undemanding, as you can see below, despite having moved above trough levels hit in June. The Price/Sales ratio is particularly modest, especially considering the exceedingly favorable backdrop for a U.S.-based oil and gas producer.
Five-Year Price/Sales and P/E Ratios [Bloomberg]
Diamondback Energy (FANG)
A very similar security that has also rewarded Haymaker readers — at least for those who actually act on our recommendations — is Diamondback Energy (FANG). We recommended FANG back on April 7th, 2025, at $121 and added it to our Buy List at that time.
Per the chart below, we pretty much caught the three-year low on this one and it's now up almost 75%. Not too shabby in less than a year and a half. Of course, that was during the Liberation/Obliteration Day period of extreme broad market weakness. Regardless, that's considerably better than the S&P's roughly 50% rally since the Tariff Tantrum.
Five-Year Price Chart (overhead resistance displayed) [Bloomberg]
FANG also continues to trade very inexpensively. Relative to its own history, it's definitely at the low end on a Price/Sales basis. As we've so often written, this is our preferred valuation metric for a cyclical company like FANG. Actually, what happened in 2022 is a good example. That was when oil prices vaulted to over $100 during the first half of that year, creating an unusual profits burst. Earnings per share more than doubled from 2021 to 2022, deflating the P/E to an unsustainably low point. The Price/Sales ratio was also depressed but to a significantly lesser extent. This is why we find the latter more reliable with companies where profits can fluctuate considerably.
Five-Year Price/Sales and P/E Ratio for FANG [Bloomberg]
As readers should be well aware, we often suggest trimming positions that have been extremely rewarding. In this case, though, we are inclined to sit tight and, hopefully, let them run. The chart patterns, the valuation, and the fundamental stories all remain highly encouraging. Further, both have the potential to be acquired by one of the Super Majors, like Exxon; however, as we've expressed previously, those are always longshots.
Newmont Mining (NEM)
With this entity, the largest North American gold miner, we're coming to a different conclusion. For those who simply want to cut to the chase: it's trim time, in our view.
Candidly, NEM was an embarrassment for us early on, including announcing a 37% dividend cut in early 2024. That was soon after we positively wrote it up, partially because the pre-cut yield was higher than a 10-year Treasury and it also provided a hefty hedge against monetary debasement. This, along with soft earnings, caused its own debasement, at least temporarily: it lost around 25% of its value in short order. Fortunately, we gave it a mild positive plug when it was on the ash heap.
By August of 2025, it was breaking out, as you can see below. At the time, we focused on the series of positive earnings surprises it was (finally!) reporting. We even stuck our necks out and said we thought the earnings per share (EPS) estimate of $5 for 2025 was low. We were dead-on with that one, as it ended up reporting almost $7 of EPS for the full year.
Five-Year Price Chart of NEM (with overhead resistance displayed) [Bloomberg]
Another key point we made about NEM was that it was (and actually still is) the only gold miner in the S&P 500. We felt that might give it an added boost once it became clear it was on an earnings roll, encouraging institutional investors to embrace the name. That has undoubtedly happened and been a contributing factor in its moonshot. (Of course, almost all gold miners have all been on fire since 2024, and are again after a nasty correction earlier this year.)
Perhaps reflecting its special status, NEM is back at its early 2025 peak whereas the senior gold miner ETF, GDX, remains about 10% below its high. But what concerns us the most is the straight up nature of the recent recovery run graphically displayed below. A non-trivial retracement strikes us as highly probable. We'd also note its Price/Sales ratio looks a bit stretched, as well.
Ergo, we believe cashing in some of your gains on this one is a prudent move.
Five-Year Price/Sales and P/E Ratios
Alibaba (BABA)
We recommended Alibaba on May 14, 2026, at $162.11. The company reported Q1 FY2027 earnings last week: revenue of RMB (renminbi, China's currency) 268.95 billion grew 9% year-over-year and beat consensus; adjusted EPS of RMB 8.52 missed the RMB 10.72 consensus by a wide margin. The miss was largely due to heavy AI infrastructure capital expenditure compressing near-term profitability. Cloud revenue grew 45% year-over-year, its fastest pace in 22 quarters, and AI-related product revenue grew by triple digits.
Five-Year Price Chart of BABA (with overhead resistance displayed) [Bloomberg]
The most significant development since May is Qwen's emergence as the dominant open-source AI model ecosystem globally. Qwen has surpassed 3 billion downloads, accounting for more than 50% of all open-source model downloads worldwide and outpacing Meta's Llama by more than 13 to 1. Over 300,000 derivative models have been built on Qwen. Hugging Face's 2026 report named it, "the default workflow for developers deciding what models to fine-tune and deploy." The Qwen3.8-27B, released August 14, accumulated 3 million downloads in its first weekend while running on consumer hardware. The 45% cloud growth is the commercial evidence of this flywheel: developers building on Qwen deploy on Alibaba Cloud.
The 20% loss is real and it's been a painful few months to be a holder of this stock. But we think our original thesis (that Alibaba's cloud and AI infrastructure was being systematically undervalued) is more supported today than in May. The EPS miss is the accounting cost of building what this powerful competitive advantage requires, and the cloud and Qwen data confirm it is being built successfully. Investors in BABA today are buying a business with $148 billion in trailing revenue, $15 billion in net income, 45% cloud growth, the world's most downloaded open-source AI model family, and a P/E-to-growth rate (PEG) of 0.59 (46% below its own historical average P/E and 1.78x EV/EBITDA). The discount is simply a fact and the key question is whether it is deserved. Simply put, we think the discount has overshot.
We are maintaining a buy rating on BABA and will continue to monitor near-term developments. This stock is for investors who have a long-term horizon and can stomach a hefty dose of volatility. For those who don't fit this description, we'd suggest trimming or exiting the position.
The Haymaker Team
***After writing this piece, news broke just last night that Alibaba issued 710 million new shares at HK$112.70, an 8.4% discount to Friday's close, raising $10.2 billion with 100% of proceeds earmarked for AI infrastructure. The book closed within hours with $28 billion in total demand, nearly three times oversubscribed, including $6 billion from sovereign wealth funds and long-only investors. Hong Kong shares fell as much as 10% at the open but have since recovered sharply, trading only slightly lower (~1.5%) as of this writing.
Buys PALL Cost/Date corrected.
Trims/Holds
Sells