One month ago I wrote that on the first day of August we enjoyed “the best single-day performance in the thirteen-year history of our Rapid Profits Matrix.” On that day we closed positions in Credit Acceptance Corp. (CACC), IPG Photonics (IPGP) and Vale S.A. (VALE) for annualized gains in excess of 100% for each of them.

Turns out, that was as good as it was going to get for the month, which in rapid succession witnessed escalating hostilities out of North Korea, a protest rally in Charlottesville that turned deadly, and historic devastation by Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

In the long run, none of those things may have a material impact on the stock market, which ended the month of August flat; but in the near term, all of them can incite emotional reactions that most definitely affect the financial markets. And if a shooting war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, then there could be substantial long term effects as well. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but as the old saying goes “hope is not a strategy.”

What is a strategy is closing out losing positions that are at risk of declining further, which is what we did in August. I dislike taking a loss as much as anyone, but I was compelled to sell B. Riley Financial (RILY), Jernigan Capital (JCAP), Ensco plc (ESV) and Francesca’s Holdings (FRAN) after each of them traded through their respective stop loss levels.

At the same time, we opened four new positions and extended the holding period for another, leaving us with seven open positons in our portfolio with five of them showing a modest gain and two of them at a small loss as of today. Here’s a quick rundown of where each of them stands at the moment.

After last month’s flurry of buys and sells our oldest portfolio position is Bank of the Ozarks (OZRK), which we opened three months ago at a share price near $45 and extended for another month two weeks ago. We had a nice gain in it over the first six weeks, but the stock dropped after the company’s Chief Lending Officer resigned suddenly, triggering speculation that something was amiss in the bank’s loan portfolio. So far no news has broken to support that pessimism, so I’m sticking with it on the expectation that the stock will rally once that fear has subsided.

We also opened our position in United Therapeutics (UTHR) in June at a share price just below $130. With the exception of a brief zigzag below $125 and then above $135 a month ago there really hasn’t been much price movement one way or the other so far. That’s because other than being included in a press release by Celularity as one of a group of biotech companies that have invested in some of its treatments, there hasn’t been any news to draw attention to the stock. But we have one more month left in our target holding period, so there is still time for something interesting to happen with this stock.

Our only remaining holding from the positions opened in July is Bank of New York Mellon (BK), bought near $54. But the stock took a quick 5% hit during the second week of August after the company announced that it was postponing an “Investor Day” from November to an undetermined date. That set off alarm bells on Wall Street since these “dog and pony” shows are almost always used as a pep rally to get analysts fired up about a company’s future prospects. But the company confirmed last week that it will be making a similar presentation on September 11 at a major conference in New York, so we should soon know if there is any reason to be concerned.

We added Bojangles (BOJA) to the portfolio near $13 on August 1, one week after it released second quarter results that drove its share price down to its lowest level in over a year. Since then it has traded in a narrow range, reflecting uncertainty over its near-term earnings prospects. For what its worth, the 11 investment banking firms covering the company have an average one-year price target of $17.95 on the stock, which is nearly 40% above our entry price. With BOJA trading down to its lower Bollinger Band last week, we should find out this week if it has enough technical support to hold at its current price.

A week later we added Fox Factory Holdings (FOXF) to our portfolio near $39, which was followed by a quick dip below $37 before rising above $40 last week. That price action appears to be a delayed reaction to the company’s second quarter earnings report, which was released the week before we added it to our portfolio. There has been no news since then out of the company, but the steady 10% recovery off of its August 15 low suggests one of its institutional investors may be adding to their position after taking a hard look at the optimistic forward earnings guidance language included in the quarterly report.

On the same day FOXF was bottoming out we added Athene Holding (ATH) to the portfolio at a price of $53. We added the stock a week after it released its second quarter results, which came in better than expected. There hasn’t been any news since then, but coincidentally Athene announced that it will also be making a presentation at the same analyst conference in New York next week as BK, so that may get the stock moving if the reception to what it has to say is favorable.

Our most recent addition to the portfolio, Western Digital (WDC), was bought near $89 after the company made its best and final offer to acquire Toshiba. But today a report surfaced that the company would consider dropping out of the bidding for Toshiba in exchange for a larger piece in its existing joint venture with it, which in turn would free up capital for WDC to use for other acquisitions such as the one announced last week to purchase the assets of cloud storage provider Upthere. Either way, WDC should benefit once analysts recalculate its future revenue stream so I am not overly concerned which way the Toshiba deal goes.