Pete Carmasino & Marc Chaikin Power Portfolio Picks Revealed

Discover how Pete Carmasino & Marc Chaikin’s 90-day Power Portfolio aims to beat the S&P, manage bear-market risk, and target consistent double-digit gains with sector-smart stock and ETF picks.

The 90‑Day Strategy Built for the “Year of the Bear”

If 2026 truly becomes the “Year of the Bear,” most investors will once again learn the same painful lesson: The market might drop 20%… but the average portfolio often does far worse. The gap between index returns and real‑world investor results is exactly what Marc Chaikin and portfolio manager Pete Carmasino set out to fix with an approach that is deliberately short term, fully rules‑driven, and focused on beating the market every 90 days – not once a decade.

At the core of this approach is Chaikin Power Portfolio – a 10‑position, 90‑day model portfolio powered by the Chaikin Power Gauge and Pete’s professional portfolio‑management framework. It is designed to help investors move with the market’s rotations instead of being crushed by them, targeting potential gains before, during, and after bear markets while attempting to keep risk under strict control.

Why Traditional Investors Keep Losing to the Market

For decades, data from independent research firms have shown that the “average investor” tends to underperform the S&P 500 in good years and bad – often by a shocking margin. In 2018, a volatile but relatively modest down year for the index, the S&P fell about 4%… while the average investor lost roughly 9%. In 2022, history will record a “mild” bear market with a maximum S&P drawdown of around 24% and a full‑year loss near 18% – yet the average investor’s portfolio was estimated to be down about 44% at the worst point and roughly 21% for the year.

That pattern isn’t just about crashes; it’s about behavior. Investors tend to chase what just worked, panic‑sell into weakness, and cling to laggards far too long. When you run the math, the difference is enormous: a hypothetical 100,000 dollars parked in an S&P 500 ETF in 2018 and held through the end of 2025 might grow to roughly 286,000 dollars, while the same amount compounded at “average investor” returns would reach only about 205,000 dollars – more than 80,000 dollars behind.

The lesson is brutal but clear: it is not enough to “ride out the market” if your actual decisions keep you permanently behind. Chaikin Power Portfolio was built specifically to attack that problem by systematizing the two areas where investors most often fail – what to own, and when to move on.

The Bear Market “Window” in Election Years

Marc Chaikin has spent much of his 50‑year Wall Street career studying how markets behave around U.S. elections, and he believes 2026 demands special attention. It is a midterm election year – historically the weakest year in the four‑year presidential cycle, marked by abnormal volatility, sharp drawdowns, and lower than average returns. When you study market history back to the mid‑20th century, midterm years on average see about half the annual return of “normal” years, and the typical peak‑to‑trough decline from the post‑election year high into the midterm year low is around 20% – the textbook definition of a bear market.

But Chaikin goes further by highlighting a specific six‑month stretch he calls the Bear Market Window. Beginning around the end of Q1 – he has singled out March 31 as the key date for 2026 – market conditions have historically been “unusually favorable” for bear markets and double‑digit corrections. Time and again, from 1946 and 1962 to 1990, 2002, 2010, 2018, and especially 2022, the most punishing midterm sell‑offs either began or accelerated in Q2–Q3.

Chaikin likens this to hurricane season: storms can form outside the official dates, but probabilities spike inside a well‑defined window. In the same way, the Bear Market Window is not a guaranteed crash, but it is a period when ignoring risk has historically been dangerous. The Power Portfolio strategy is explicitly built to operate inside that environment – accepting volatility as the “price of admission,” but trying to redirect it in your favor.

The Power Gauge: A 3–6 Month Lens on 5,000+ Stocks

The backbone of Chaikin Power Portfolio is the Chaikin Power Gauge – an algorithm that rates more than 5,000 stocks and over 800 ETFs as Bullish, Neutral, or Bearish based on a blend of fundamental and technical factors. The system is designed to assess the next three to six months of potential performance, which makes it naturally suited to a 90‑day portfolio rotation schedule.

The Power Gauge has already earned industry recognition; Chaikin’s firm has been named best investment research provider over established names like Morningstar and Bloomberg, and high‑profile investors such as Jim Cramer have publicly said they pay close attention to its signals. In preparing for the current Power Portfolio campaign, Marc and Pete ran the Power Gauge against the top 50 stocks of 2024 and 2025 and found that it flashed Bullish ratings on 44 of the top 50 winners in 2024 and 43 of the top 50 in 2025 – an effective “hit rate” of 87% on the year’s biggest movers.

Yet Chaikin and Carmasino emphasize that a strong research tool is not enough by itself. The missing piece for most investors is structure: a disciplined way to turn raw signals into a coherent, risk‑managed portfolio that can adapt every quarter as sector leadership shifts. That’s where the Power Portfolio comes in.

From Buy‑and‑Hold to 90‑Day “Micro Cycles”

Traditional advice tells investors to buy high‑quality stocks, diversify, and hold on for the long term. Pete Carmasino, who spent decades managing portfolios for wealthy families at firms like Prudential, Wachovia Securities, and PNC Investments, doesn’t reject that outright – but he argues it’s a poor fit when markets are changing dramatically every few months.

His premise is simple: in a landscape of rapid sector rotation, you don’t have a full year to guess the “best stocks of 2026.” Instead, you focus on the best stocks of the next 90 days. The Power Portfolio expresses that idea in three core rules:

• Hold only 10 positions at a time – 5 ETFs (the “haystacks”) and 5 individual stocks (the “needles”).

• Hold them for 90 days, then reassess and rotate – no overstaying, no hope‑based holding.

• Use the Power Gauge to target not just strong stocks, but the strongest sectors and industries where tailwinds are already in motion.

This 90‑day cadence allows the strategy to “zoom in” on short windows of outperformance and then move on when conditions change. Rather than trying to endure every twist of a bear market or correction, the Power Portfolio attempts to sidestep the worst areas and concentrate capital where the probabilities are more favorable in the near term.

Beating the Market in Ugly Years: 2018, 2020, 2022

To test whether this philosophy could actually work in practice, Carmasino built and backtested a model of the Power Portfolio from 2018 onward – capturing both bull markets and some of the nastiest environments in recent memory. The results across the difficult years are particularly telling:

• 2018 Trade War year: While the S&P 500 finished down about 4% and the average investor lost around 9%, the 90‑day model would have delivered roughly 12 separate double‑digit winners and finished the year up about 19%.

• 2020 COVID crash: During Q1, even with two positions dropping more than 20%, the model still would have beaten the S&P because it held names like Nvidia that rose while the index plunged. Across the full year, the Power Portfolio would have returned about 48% versus roughly 18% for the S&P, more than 2.5 times the index.

• 2022 bear market: While the S&P ended the year down around 18% and the average investor was down about 21%, the model would have closed the year with a positive return by rotating into energy and health‑care winners such as Consol Energy and Biogen, plus defensive names like Campbell Soup that posted double‑digit gains in just 90 days.

In each case, the same pattern appears: where the index oscillated and the typical investor underperformed, a disciplined 90‑day rotation rooted in sector strength and Power Gauge signals would have found enough winners to offset losers and leave the model ahead.

Compounding the Edge: From 100,000 to Over 1.1 Million

Outperformance in a single year is interesting; outperformance compounded over many years is transformative. When Marc and Pete extended their backtest from 2018 through 2025, they compared three simple paths for a 100,000‑dollar starting stake:

• Invest like the “average investor” and accept typical behavioral errors.

• Buy and hold an ETF that tracks the S&P 500.

• Follow the 10‑position, 90‑day Power Portfolio model.

By the end of 2025, 100,000 dollars invested at “average investor” returns would have grown to roughly 205,000 dollars. The same amount in an S&P ETF would be around 286,000 dollars. But the modeled Power Portfolio, continually reinvested and rotated every quarter, would have compounded that initial 100,000 dollars into more than 1,147,000 dollars before taxes – more than one million dollars of equity in roughly eight years.

On an annualized basis, the S&P’s average return in this period was about 15%, versus approximately 36% for the Power Portfolio model – more than double. That’s the difference between “doing fine” and potentially changing your retirement outlook entirely. Of course, all backtested results come with the standard caveat: past performance – especially hypothetical performance – cannot guarantee future results. But the consistency of the edge, across both bull and bear environments, is what has given Chaikin and Carmasino the confidence to stand behind this framework.

The “Haystack and Needle” Architecture: ETFs + Stocks

One of the central innovations of Chaikin Power Portfolio is the way it combines broad exposure with targeted bets. Instead of asking you to choose between diversified funds and individual stock ideas, it deliberately uses both.

1. Step 1: Rate and rank ETFs
   Chaikin extended the Power Gauge to cover more than 800 ETFs, including sector, industry, and theme funds. Each fund receives a Bullish, Neutral, or Bearish rating, and the system can rank them by overall strength. Every 90 days, Pete starts by scanning this ETF universe and selecting the five top‑ranked, strongly Bullish funds – the “haystacks” where the model believes the probability of short‑term outperformance is highest.

2. Step 2: Find the strongest stocks inside each ETF
   With the haystacks identified, the Power Gauge then looks inside each fund at the constituent stocks, scoring and ranking them individually. From there, Pete applies his own technical and portfolio‑management lens to choose one favorite “needle” stock from each ETF.

The final result is a 10‑position portfolio each quarter: five ETFs and five of their strongest individual holdings. This structure matters because sector and industry membership alone explain a large share of a stock’s performance – studies estimate roughly 50% of a stock’s return can be attributed to its industry group. By choosing the right haystacks first and then the best needles within them, the model tries to stack probabilities in two layers – at the macro (sector/industry) level and at the stock level.

Real‑world examples from the backtest illustrate this dynamic. In 2021, a uranium ETF (URA) and its top stock Cameco both surged, as did a construction ETF and its standout holding MasTec, and an oil and gas ETF paired with Tidewater. In many cases, the ETF might be up 20% in a quarter while the top stock rose 30%–45%. The combination gave the Power Portfolio far more “beta plus alpha” than either component alone.

Why ETFs Are the “Secret Sauce” in This Approach

Many individual investors find ETFs boring compared with stock ideas. Marc Chaikin argues that, in the Power Portfolio context, they are anything but. Across the backtested period and into live results, some of the portfolio’s most important winners were ETFs – software, infrastructure, semiconductor, and homebuilder funds that outpaced the S&P by wide margins during specific quarters.

In Q2 2020, for example, five of the portfolio’s nine 20%‑plus winners in the 90 days after the COVID bottom were stocks, but four were ETFs. In 2019, a software ETF outpaced the market; in 2023, a homebuilder ETF gained about 16% in a quarter when the S&P rose only 7%. These kinds of moves are especially valuable in a 10‑position, equal‑weight portfolio because each holding has the same impact on your outcome.

Chaikin’s view is blunt: if you refuse to buy ETFs, you are likely giving up a crucial component of the edge that the Power Portfolio has historically demonstrated. The design of the research service – pairing five ETFs with five stocks – is intentional, and the long‑term backtest suggests that changing that balance would have weakened results.

Equal Weighting and the Discipline of 10 Positions

Another deliberate design choice in Chaikin Power Portfolio is equal weighting. Every quarter, the model assumes you allocate the same amount of capital to each of the 10 positions – no over‑sizing of “favorites” and no token positions. That stands in contrast to many traditional portfolios that skew heavily toward mega‑cap names and sprinkle smaller positions in more speculative ideas.

Carmasino’s reasoning is rooted in his 90‑day horizon. Over such a short span, a 10‑billion‑dollar stock can rise faster than an 800‑billion‑dollar behemoth, and there’s no reliable way to know in advance which stock will deliver the biggest move. In one 2018 quarter, for instance, Amazon produced a strong 17.8% gain – but mid‑cap names Veeva Systems and Fortinet, both in the same tech cohort, climbed 41.6% and 47.8% respectively. If you had overweighted Amazon simply because of its size, you would have left a lot of return on the table.

Equal weighting also simplifies execution for subscribers. Rather than worrying about complex allocation formulas, a Power Portfolio user can decide how much total capital to commit to the strategy – whether 10,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars, or more – and simply divide it across the 10 recommended tickers each quarter. That simplicity reinforces the core discipline: follow the model, don’t improvise position sizes based on emotion, and let the edge show up over time.

Measuring Risk the Professional Way: The Sortino Ratio

Most individual investors are familiar with the idea that “higher return usually means higher risk,” but few use quantitative tools to measure that trade‑off. In the professional world, portfolio managers lean on ratios like Sharpe and Sortino to evaluate risk‑adjusted performance. Because Chaikin Power Portfolio is explicitly short‑term and focused on downside volatility, Carmasino emphasizes the Sortino Ratio, which penalizes only bad volatility (downside moves) rather than total volatility.

On the usual interpretation scale, a Sortino Ratio below 0 is considered unacceptable, 0–1 is sub‑optimal, 1–2 is good, 2–3 is very good, and anything above 3 is excellent. Since inception, the Power Portfolio’s Sortino Ratio in backtesting comes out around 4.92 – firmly in the “beyond excellent” zone by those standards. That suggests the model isn’t just chasing high returns with reckless risk; it is achieving its average annual return of about 36% in a way that, historically, has controlled downside more effectively than many strategies with similar upside.

Of course, no ratio can guarantee future safety, and all investing involves the possibility of loss. But for investors tired of “winging it,” having an explicit risk metric baked into the strategy – and seeing it stand up to eight years of varied market conditions – can be reassuring.

From Hypothetical to Live: Real‑World 2025 Results

After extensive backtesting, Chaikin and Carmasino launched Chaikin Power Portfolio as a live research offering in March 2025. From Q2 through Q4 of that year – roughly nine months of live recommendations – the portfolio delivered more than 30% total return while the S&P returned about 17% for the full year. In one standout quarter, Q3 2025, all 10 recommended positions – the five ETFs and five stocks – rose by double digits in just 90 days, including gains of roughly 21% in Broadcom, 23% in Citigroup, and 26% in BWX Technologies.

Subscriber stories echo those numbers on the ground. One user reported covering his subscription fee “12 times over” in a single quarter; another said he had paid for the service “20x over.” A colleague from Stansberry Research, Sam, quietly invested 25,000 dollars from his mother’s retirement alongside the Power Portfolio when it launched and later reported that her account was up 33% – more than 25,000 dollars in profit – in nine months. As always, Chaikin Analytics stresses that such results are not typical and that all investments carry risk, but these case studies demonstrate that the 90‑day framework can be implemented in real accounts, not just spreadsheets.

What You Actually Get as a Power Portfolio Member

Chaikin Power Portfolio is positioned as more than a newsletter; it’s pitched as a “total portfolio solution.” The current offer for new members bundles several components designed to work together:

One Year of Chaikin Power Portfolio (50% off)

Members receive a fresh set of 10 recommendations every 90 days: five top‑ranked ETFs and five top stocks selected from those funds. Each quarter’s package includes a detailed breakdown of the positions, the thesis behind each, and ongoing monthly updates explaining what the Power Gauge is seeing and how Pete plans to navigate the next moves. The regular price is 5,000 dollars per year, but the current promotion reduces that to 2,500 dollars for new members – a 50% discount.

One Free Year of Power Gauge Pro

This is an advanced, subscription‑only version of the Power Gauge platform, normally priced at 5,000 dollars per year on its own. With it, you can:

• Type in any ticker to see whether the system rates it Bullish, Bearish, or Neutral.

• Use screening tools to find the most Bullish stocks and ETFs that match your personal criteria.

• Review rating histories and factor breakdowns in a Workspace interface.

For Power Portfolio members, Chaikin has added exclusive features tailored specifically to tracking and managing the 10‑position model.

The Chaikin Portfolio List (New‑Member Tool)

Built inside Power Gauge Pro, the Portfolio List lets you mirror your actual holdings in the Power Portfolio by entering the number of shares you own and your cost basis. The tool then approximates your real‑world performance and compares it to the S&P benchmark. This extra layer of “surveillance” helps you monitor whether you’re truly capturing the model’s potential – or drifting away from it over time.

The Discovery Engine (Netflix‑Style Stock Finder)

Inspired by Netflix’s recommendation engine, the Discovery Engine lets you start with a stock you like – say Tesla or Nvidia – and instantly see other Bullish stocks that share similar characteristics according to the Power Gauge and its underlying algorithms. In one example, entering Tesla surfaced a little‑known homebuilder, Dream Finders Homes, which subsequently soared about 256%, far outpacing Tesla’s roughly 33% gain over the same period. This tool is intended to help users uncover “next‑generation” winners that may not be obvious from headlines alone.

Protecting Capital: Chaikin’s “10 Ticking Time Bombs”

Making money is only half of the equation; avoiding catastrophic losers is equally important. To address that, Chaikin Power Portfolio members receive ongoing access to “Chaikin’s 10 Ticking Time Bombs” – an automated blacklist updated daily when markets are open. The list highlights:

• The five worst‑ranked ETFs in the Power Gauge at that moment.

• The five worst stocks inside those bearish ETFs.

The idea is straightforward: just as the model tells you which 10 tickers to own each quarter, it also warns you about 10 tickers you may want to sell or avoid because they sit in weak sectors or carry severe downside risk. Backtested examples from 2022 illustrate why this matters: while bearish‑rated ETFs such as XRT, XSW, and XITK fell 35%–60%, some of their bottom‑ranked constituent stocks – including Burlington, Leslie’s, DocuSign, RingCentral, Zoom, and Fiverr – dropped 70%–92%. Being able to identify those “time bombs” early can mean the difference between a manageable drawdown and a portfolio‑wrecking disaster.

Added Tailwinds: Stansberry’s Top Tailwind Stocks

As part of the current offer, Chaikin has also partnered with Stansberry Research, one of the largest independent research publishers in the U.S., to add an additional layer of stock ideas. Stansberry produces dozens of services, and access to all of them via its “everything included” membership costs around 33,000 dollars. Marc and Pete used their sector and industry screeners to run the Power Gauge across every stock currently recommended in Stansberry’s lineup and hand‑selected a shortlist of names with particularly strong tailwinds.

Those picks are packaged into a special report called “Stansberry’s Top Tailwind Stocks,” valued at 2,000 dollars, which new Power Portfolio members receive free as part of the 2,500‑dollar bundle. For investors who already follow Stansberry, this report offers an additional layer of confirmation on which ideas may be best aligned with Chaikin’s sector‑rotation framework.

Ongoing Guidance: Monthly Updates and a Starter Guide

New members don’t just receive a one‑time trade list; they’re given an ongoing blueprint to follow.

• Monthly Portfolio Updates: Pete provides monthly commentary on the current quarter’s 10 positions – where they stand, how the Power Gauge is reading them, and what (if anything) he plans to change. That way, you’re never left guessing whether a temporary pullback is a concern or a normal bump in the road.

• Power Portfolio Starter Guide: To smooth the onboarding process, Chaikin and Carmasino have produced a concise handbook explaining how the 90‑day strategy works, how they implement it, and the theory behind it. It lays out the rules, tools, and practical steps so that even investors new to the Power Gauge can hit the ground running.

These materials are particularly valuable if you want to integrate the Power Portfolio with other strategies, or if you manage money for a spouse or family member and need a clear framework to explain what you’re doing and why.

Terms, Guarantees, and How the Offer Works

Because the current promotion bundles approximately 15,998 dollars of tools, research, and bonuses for 2,500 dollars, Chaikin Analytics does not provide cash refunds on this particular offer. Instead, memberships are covered by a 30‑day 100% satisfaction guarantee in the form of firm credit. If you decide within the first month that Power Portfolio isn’t a fit, you can contact Member Services and apply your full purchase price toward any other present or future Chaikin Analytics product.

Practically speaking, once you complete the secure order form, you receive immediate access to the current live portfolio – the 10 positions already in place – plus the member portal, Power Gauge Pro, the Portfolio List, the Discovery Engine, the 10 Ticking Time Bombs, and the Stansberry tailwind report. You can choose how much capital to allocate to the model, and Pete’s regular emails will alert you ahead of each new 90‑day rotation.

Who Power Portfolio Is Really For

Chaikin Power Portfolio is not a day‑trading system, and it does not rely on options, leverage, or speculative instruments. It is built for investors who:

• Want a structured, repeatable way to try to beat the S&P 500 rather than merely match it.

• Are willing to adjust their holdings every 90 days, but don’t want to manage dozens of positions or watch screens all day.

• Recognize that sector rotation and election‑cycle risk make 2026 a challenging year and would prefer to lean on a battle‑tested framework rather than emotion.

If you’re comfortable holding a handful of blue‑chip stocks for decades and have no interest in adjusting allocations more than once a year, this may feel too active for your style. But if you’re the kind of investor who has watched the past decade’s whipsaws – from the 2018 trade war and 2020 pandemic crash to the 2022 bear market and the AI‑driven surges of 2023–2024 – and wished you had a way to systematically harness those shifts, Chaikin Power Portfolio is specifically engineered for that role.

Why Consider Subscribing Before the Next 90‑Day Cycle

Marc Chaikin has marked March 31, 2026, as the start of the next Bear Market Window, and Pete plans to release the Q2 Power Portfolio recommendations after the market closes on March 30. Joining before that date positions you to receive the new list of five ETFs and five stocks and act on them as soon as the market opens, rather than trying to play catch‑up once the quarter is already underway.

Over the last eight years of backtesting plus nearly a year of live results, the strategy has shown the ability to make money in rising markets, falling markets, and chaotic sideways environments, all while posting a risk‑adjusted profile that many professional managers would envy. The opportunity for prospective members is straightforward: instead of reacting to the next wave of volatility alone, you can align yourself with a 90‑day, rules‑based process built by a veteran of nine bear markets and a portfolio manager whose “great white whale” has been this exact model.

If your goal for 2026 and beyond is not just to survive potential bear markets but to give yourself a realistic shot at beating the S&P and accelerating your path toward financial independence, Chaikin Power Portfolio is designed to be that vehicle.

Frequently Asked Questions: Pete Carmasino & Marc Chaikin Power Portfolio