The excavator that decided it was an AI stockCaterpillar Inc.BATS:CATEXCAVOI published almost nothing for the past year. I didn't disappear, I shifted focus. That whole time I was working on equities, building a system, studying numbers. Crypto never went away, but most of my attention went where I felt more clarity. From now on I'll be sharing what's in my portfolio. With a lag, well behind real time. Think of it as a diary. These are not signals. And if I'm starting somewhere, it has to be Caterpillar. My logo is an excavator, the brand is called EXCAVO, and the first stock up for review is made by the people who build the actual excavators. Some coincidences you just can't make up. Why CAT The business needs no explanation. Yellow iron for construction, mines, pipelines, energy, data centers. The thesis is just as simple: Caterpillar sells the shovel to everyone who digs. US infrastructure, reshoring, copper and gold mining, energy capex, server farms for AI. Every one of those stories eventually means an order for yellow iron. I don't try to pick which trend breaks out. I hold the company that gets paid regardless of which one does. The strategy selects stocks on a momentum-plus-fundamentals screen and reviews the portfolio once a month. Everything runs by the rules, with no regard for the price at any given moment. CAT passed the filter and went into the portfolio. As long as the backlog keeps growing and free cash flow holds, it stays in. What keeps it in the portfolio right now The backlog added roughly $2.5 billion year-over-year. Customers are paying upfront and ordering equipment on a forward horizon. CAT Financial, the credit division, swung from a loss to a profit, a move of more than $200 million. That tells you demand for equipment is backed by real financing, standing on more than accounting tricks. Free cash flow is holding. The machine generates cash even when margins are compressed. Margins did compress. That's a fact to keep in mind and state plainly. The market has been looking ahead for a while, pricing in a recovery in the capex cycle. This is a multiple re-rating story more than a cheap-stock story. Holding the position doesn't mean being blind to that. The red line There is a specific threshold, so you can watch the same thing yourself rather than take my word for it. Two consecutive quarters of backlog decline, or margin below 16% with flat revenue, signals the compression is structural. In that case the position comes off at the next rebalance. One weak quarter is noise; we hold without question. As long as both metrics stay above the line, the position stays alive. Price alone decides nothing here. It can go wherever it wants. As long as the backlog and margins hold, I'm not moving. About tomorrow Tomorrow I have a scheduled portfolio rebalance. CAT may well be sold. Nothing would be wrong with it, the system simply reviews its holdings on its own terms. I have no attachment to this stock. If the metrics shift by the rebalance date, I'll exit without hesitation. If it passes the filter again, it stays. That's how this works. No drama, no promises. Just showing what's there. Regards, EXCAVO