Coming to you a day early this week, since I’m off to visit a college with one of the little Gumshoes (well, not so little anymore). What’s up with the markets and our portfolios?

There’s been lots of talk this week about possibly “aggressive” interest rate increases from the Fed, which seemed to be the major cause of some weak days for the growthiest stocks (the higher interest rates and inflation go, the less “future money” is worth today). And mortgage rates have soared, relatively speaking, which is giving people ample reason for caution about companies that benefit from the housing market — 5% mortgages probably aren’t enough to kill the housing market, not when demand for homes is so strong, housing supply has failed to keep up with population growth and household formation for a decade now, and wages are also rising, but it certainly might start to slow things down.

That’s bad news on the margin for lots of companies in the Real Money Portfolio — probably most notably Dream Finders Homes (DFH) and Goosehead Insurance (GSHD), the former because, duh, it builds homes and prices for those homes might eventually start falling, the latter because its biggest business is in selling homeowners insurance, and trying to grow and take share in homeowners insurance is a lot easier when new homeowners are looking for coverage (most of us don’t shop around for insurance very often — the natural time when we’re most open to switching or considering a new agent is when we buy a new house or car).

I’m not placing any new “macro” bets at the moment on where housing goes in the next year, though I remain generally optimistic on that market — and I still like those companies for their multi-year growth potential. I think there’s good chance that they’re building something we’ll be astounded by a decade from now.

And I do still have a little interest rate hedge in the portfolio — I am definitely not going to be as good at this kind of hedging as Bill Ackman, who effectively turned his interest rate hedge at Pershing Square Holdings (PSH.AS, PSHZF) into a free billion-dollar position in Netflix back in January, but I have hedged some against interest rate spikes in recent years… my most profitable move on that front was buying puts on the long bond ETF ...