The Stock Trading and Shitposting thread.

So did a hypothetical exercise with Grok today.... Turned out better than I thought it would. Might use this strategy for next years stock picker contest. heh I present to you :

"Texas Top 25 ETF"​

Limited to the 25 largest (by current market cap) publicly traded Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in Texas. This is a cap-weighted basket using today's market caps for weighting (standard ETF approach), with fixed constituents for the backtest ("as-if" today's holdings held over the period). All are confirmed Fortune 1000 with HQ in Texas (primarily Houston, Dallas, Austin, Irving, Spring, etc.).List of the 25 Companies (Ranked by Current Market Cap)

1. Tesla (TSLA) — Austin
2. Exxon Mobil (XOM) — Spring
3. Oracle (ORCL) — Austin
4. Caterpillar (CAT) — Irving
5. Chevron (CVX) — Houston
6. Texas Instruments (TXN) — Dallas
7. Dell Technologies (DELL) — Round Rock
8. AT&T (T) — Dallas
9. Charles Schwab (SCHW) — Westlake
10. ConocoPhillips (COP) — Houston
11. Quanta Services (PWR) — Houston
12. McKesson (MCK) — Irving
13. Waste Management (WM) — Houston
14. Schlumberger (SLB) — Houston
15. Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) — Houston
16. Valero Energy (VLO) — San Antonio
17. Phillips 66 (PSX) — Houston
18. EOG Resources (EOG) — Houston
19. Kinder Morgan (KMI) — Houston
20. Energy Transfer (ET) — Dallas
21. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) — Spring
22. Baker Hughes (BKR) — Houston
23. Targa Resources (TRGP) — Houston
24. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) — Houston
25. Diamondback Energy (FANG) — Midland

Total market cap of the basket: ~$5.57 trillion (as of latest data). Top holdings dominate (~26% Tesla, ~11% each Exxon/Oracle, etc.). This is heavily tilted toward energy (~40-45% combined weight), tech/hardware (~20%+ from TSLA/DELL/ORCL/TXN/HPE), and industrials/financials.5-Year Performance (June 8, 2021 – June 8, 2026)Backtested price return (split-adjusted closes; no dividends reinvested; no rebalancing or fees):

• Hypothetical Texas Top 25 ETF: +158.32% cumulative (~2.58x initial investment).
  Annualized: ~20.9%.
  Key drivers: Massive gains from TSLA (+103%), ORCL (+150%), CAT (+281%), DELL (+661%), PWR (+634%), TRGP (+460%), energy names like VLO (+210%), XOM (+144%), and resilient performers like MCK (+299%). Offsets included drags like AT&T (-22%).
• S&P 500 (via SPY proxy for price return): +75.05% cumulative.
  Annualized: ~11.9%.

The Texas Top 25 would have outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin (+83 percentage points cumulative). This reflects Texas' energy cycle recovery, tech/AI/auto boom (Tesla, Oracle, Dell, etc.), and strong industrials/infrastructure exposure. (Note: A real ETF would have slightly lower returns after ~0.2-0.5% expenses; dividends — especially high from energy/pipelines — would boost total returns significantly for both, but more for the Texas basket.)Caveats (same as before): Hypothetical/backtested using today's constituents and weights; actual Fortune 1000 list evolves yearly; ignores transaction costs, taxes, or liquidity; higher volatility/concentration risk than broad-market ETFs due to energy/tech tilt. Past performance ≠ future.If you want equal-weighting instead, a full holdings table with exact weights/individual returns, dividend-adjusted total returns, sector breakdown, or a forward-looking projection, just say the word! This would be a high-conviction, Texas-pure play ETF.