Whitney Tilson
Mon, Mar 9, 2026|Whitney Tilson

Ignore the headlines and stay the course; How I diversified using index funds; Update on the underperformance of my 'Stinky Six' stocks; Recent news on Hims & Hers Health and Tesla

1) I help several of my family members manage their retirement accounts, and one of them called me over the weekend. They expressed concern about the Iran war and rising oil and gas prices.

They asked if they should sell the S&P 500 Index fund that accounts for the bulk of their savings...

My quick reply: Absolutely not.

I told them that they have a multidecade investment horizon. When placed in that context, the latest turmoil in the world – and the markets – is completely irrelevant.

I strongly recommended that they only look at their portfolio once a year, and we would review it together then.

Finally, I reminded them that 99% of the time, long-term investors should ignore the headlines and stay the course.

But is today one of those 1% times? I don't think so...

This Wall Street Journal editorial calls the recent market drop an "economic panic attack." First, it addresses the weak jobs numbers released on Friday:

The labor market has been cooling, with healthcare and social assistance driving most gains. The causes are diffuse. Job growth notably stalled after President Trump began his tariff barrage last April, which created economic uncertainty and raised business costs. His immigration raids have reduced the supply of workers, especially in construction.

Many employers say that an aging population and skills gaps make it hard to find workers in the trades. Rising productivity – 2.8% in the last year – may also mean employers need fewer workers and could explain why wage growth has remained strong despite a slowdown in hiring. Average hourly wages rose 0.4% last month and are up 3.8% in the past year.

It also notes that the sharp rise in the price of oil doesn't mean a recession is on the horizon, citing past examples:

As for the other cause of Friday's anxiety, crude oil prices took a big jump to above $93 a barrel. The cause is shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz from the fighting in the Persian Gulf region. Kuwait said that it may have to throttle production as its oil storage facilities fill up, and other producers may also do so temporarily. Qatar, which wants the war to end fast, fed the angst by saying prices could go to $150 a barrel.

Prices will rise further the longer the conflict continues, and Americans will see higher gasoline prices at the pump for a while. But to put current prices in non-panicky perspective, Brent crude traded above $90 a barrel for most of 2022 after Russia's Ukraine invasion and exceeded $100 a barrel from 2011 to 2014. Neither price surge led to a recession.

Prices will come down assuming shipping bottlenecks ease. The threat level in the Persian Gulf has already declined somewhat with fewer Iranian missile and drone attacks, and Mr. Trump has said the U.S. Navy will escort oil tankers if necessary.

In conclusion, long-term investors should stay the course.

2) Speaking of the S&P 500, it has been almost seven months since I shared this major change to my personal portfolio:

I'll be selling 60% of my holdings in an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") that tracks the S&P 500 Index. I'll be replacing two-thirds of that with an equal-weight S&P 500 ETF. And the other third will go to an international-focused ETF.

I felt it would provide some diversification away from how dominant the Big Tech stocks had become and add a modest boost to my returns.

And that's exactly what it has done so far...

To illustrate how, I'll use the State Street SPDR S&P 500 Fund (SPY), Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Fund (RSP), and Vanguard Total International Stock Fund (VXUS) as proxies. (There are many low-fee ETFs to choose from.)

As you can see, the equal-weight S&P 500 and international ETFs have done slightly better than SPY since my e-mail on August 19:

The margin of outperformance might not seem like much, between 1 and 4 percentage points over seven months. But compounded over many years – ideally decades – it's massive.

3) Maintaining a long-term perspective and being reasonably diversified are critical elements of investment success. And another is avoiding big losses...

There are so many ways to lose a lot of money quickly, including:

  • Getting divorced
  • Falling for an Internet scam
  • Becoming addicted to alcohol, drugs, and/or gambling (such as, increasingly, sports-betting apps and prediction markets – see this WSJ article: Meet the Young Men Rushing Into Betting Markets)
  • Quitting a job to pursue an ill-conceived "business opportunity"
  • Speculating in meme stocks, cryptos, and the like
  • Chasing popular, overvalued stocks

I regularly try to warn my readers about all of these, especially the latter, since I'm a stock picker and former short seller.

To that end, I named my "Stinky Six" stocks to avoid on October 29 (replacing QMMM with Carvana on December 12).

I had a high degree of confidence that these stocks would underperform, just like my "Short Squeeze Bubble Basket," "Dirty Dozen," and "Terrible 10" did. But I'm shocked at just how poorly the Stinky Six has done...

In less than 19 weeks, every single one has tumbled by double digits. And on average, they're down a staggering 27% through Friday's close versus negative 2% for the S&P 500:

I continue to recommend avoiding these stocks.

4) As you can see in the table above, Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) was down 67% at Friday's close. But that's no longer the case...

The stock soared as much as 49% this morning after the company disclosed that it had settled the lawsuit brought against it by Novo Nordisk (NVO). This article shared on Yahoo Finance has the details:

In a dramatic reversal of fortune, Hims & Hers Health has been rescued by the very company that nearly sank it. Novo Nordisk, which sued the telehealth provider just last month over copycat compounded GLP-1 drugs, has now agreed to partner with Hims to sell its branded obesity medications – including Wegovy and Ozempic – directly through the platform. The deal is expected to be announced as soon as Monday, ending the bitter legal feud and restoring a critical revenue stream that Hims had lost when their initial collaboration collapsed last year.

Hims shares surged about 40% in aftermarket trading, erasing months of pain and signaling Wall Street's relief that the company's growth engine is back online. What looked like a slow death by regulatory pressure and lost momentum has suddenly become a second act. Novo Nordisk, once Hims' aggressor, is now its savior.

So, is it time to remove Hims & Hers from my Stinky Six?

No way...

My friend and former colleague Herb Greenberg explained why in a Substack post over the weekend (only paid subscribers can access the full write-up):

What would appear to be clear is that Novo, which had little to lose from the lawsuit – aimed at Hims' blatant counterfeiting of its patented drugs – was negotiating from a position of strength. Hims faced onerous legal costs, not just fighting Novo, but also from a new battle with the Justice Department.

For the deal to be struck, it would appear that Novo would have had to agree to stop selling compounded versions of Novo's drugs, which has been its big (and profitable) value-add. Instead, if my logic is correct, it would have the right to join its competitors and others – including Novo itself – selling Novo's weight loss drugs.

He then shares this "dead giveaway" a Novo spokesperson gave to Bloomberg:

We are always in conversation with companies that can help improve patient access to [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-approved medicines for people living with chronic diseases. These talks happen on an ongoing basis.

Herb concludes:

In other words, Hims would become just another distributor, trading high-margin compounded GLP-1 sales for a "me too" partnership that everyone, including Amazon, already has. And, in the end, the deal would not help Hims' profits; it would just get rid of its lawsuit.

5) Tesla (TSLA) also remains solidly on my Stinky Six list. The company claims its robotaxis are much safer than human drivers, but it has refused to release the data, as Waymo and other companies have.

But according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA"), it turns out that Tesla's autopilot is four times worse, as this Fortune article reports:

Humans, by nature, are flawed. Put them in a two-ton vehicle, and all sorts of problems can occur. They can crash into a fixed object going straight on. They back into fixed objects when putting the car in reverse. They hit trees and poles, buses and trucks. Simply put, humans lack the quick reaction speeds and fine motor skills needed to operate a car safely.

Except there's one problem: all of the above happened to Tesla's autopilot robotaxis. All in [Austin, Texas], and all in the span of less than a month. And according to Tesla's own published findings, the company's autopilot is four times worse than that of a human...

This is most of what we know, as unlike its other autonomous vehicle competitors Waymo and Zoox – and every other company in the market – Tesla is the only company to fully redact and hide details of all crashes from the public, thanks to a confidentiality provision under the NHTSA...

Still, the disclosures about the crashes underscore what Tesla has put forward for years regarding its autopilot program: humans are in fact safer. Actually, after this month's events, they are four times safer, according to Tesla's own metrics.

While the crashes in Austin have mostly been minor or low speed, I believe it's only a matter of time before Tesla's system kills someone...

With such glaring issues at the company, I can't understand Tesla's valuation. And neither can my friend Chris Irons, aka Quoth the Raven, as he details in this Substack post (for paid subscribers):

Something is distorting Tesla's share price so much that, despite being worth about $841 billion, according to the Forbes real-time billionaire rankings, Tesla has generated only about $531 billion in total revenue across its entire history and roughly $38 billion in cumulative net profit since it was founded.

In other words, [CEO Elon] Musk's personal fortune is larger than all the revenue Tesla has ever earned combined and more than 20× the company's lifetime profits, illustrating how stock ownership in highly valued companies can produce personal wealth far exceeding the profits those companies have actually generated.

As he concludes, Tesla is the "market's favorite exception":

Yet, forward we march. Musk himself continues climbing the global wealth rankings. Exactly how that number keeps rising is sometimes difficult to explain through traditional financial logic.

Then again, that's been the story of Tesla for years. The company seems to operate according to a completely different set of market rules.

Given that history, it's entirely possible that skeptics will once again look foolish. But personally, I'm still comfortable sitting this one out.

Here are a few articles of interest I've collected over the past month related to Tesla:

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.

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