We hate rigid rules in our portfolio except for one that we have servile-like adherence to:
if a position we hold is down 50% or more since initiation, we MUST either sell out entirely or add to the position.
“Holding” is off table and unacceptable. (This assumes we have some
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Our Q3 investment letter. We discuss...
1. Our performance: YTD 34.9% / QTD 9.5% / ITD 25%
2. What we view as a no-brainer trade
3. Why yields have risen in the face of rapid disinflation
4. Our biggest loser on the year
5. Tactical screens we are running given the "higher
We are long Xometry $XMTR
The leading disruptor in digital manufacturing and is in the ~second inning of a large secular growth story.
Business background & Thesis below 🧵
We just finishing trialing Tegus and AlphaSense.
If this gets enough likes I will post our thoughts regarding pros vs cons along with our final decision.
This is NOT a Berkshire Hathaway hit piece, but some might thinks so. $BRK
We do not believe bulls (
@ChrisBloomstran
) are taking Berkshire’s vulnerabilities seriously.
Our thesis & prescription:
🧵👇
We wrote an industry essay on the evolution of
#datacenters
. (link at the bottom)
We discuss:
1. How data centers are evolving due to
#AI
workloads and new hardware requirements
2. The trends that will be occurring due to this evolution from compute to chiplet architecture
3.
If “edge” in public markets was clearly definable then it would be easily competed away.
If you do have an edge, it is most likely the sum of a myriad of things you do well, both at the conscious and subconscious level.
We added to $BRBY
New CEO Joshua Schulman will focus on entry-market customers and cost-cutting. BRBY's previous strategy proved too aggressive- their core customer was squeezed by both deteriorating financial conditions and higher prices.
Fashion's unpredictability and macro
Position sizing is like the opening move in a chess game. It either harms or helps the potential of futures moves.
Good position sizing helps preserve rationality (in either case of the stock moving against you or running up)
Latest holding $BRBY
write up:
There are only a few luxury brands globally recognized for their enduring appeal: Burberry is one of these select few, having existed for over 168 years. The current valuation presents an attractive entry point and the
As promised - Results from Our Tegus vs. AlphaSense Trial and Our Final Decision.
Over the past twelve months, we've conducted solid due diligence on roughly 300 names. (~80% U.S. & ~20% Europe, 60% small cap & 40% mid/large) .
We inputted each ticker into both Tegus and
We just finishing trialing Tegus and AlphaSense.
If this gets enough likes I will post our thoughts regarding pros vs cons along with our final decision.
@borrowed_ideas
@borrowed_ideas
we ran this, out of the current ~5300 companies trading on NYSE & NASDAQ that have had 50 consecutive periods of double digit quarterly revenue growth are: Workday, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, Fortinet, Costar & Sps Commerce. Hope this helps.
HUGE news for Yellow Corporation shareholders. Auction results came in 400mm above stalking horse bid. By our calculations, shareholder recovery should be around 600mm, indicating more than 500% upside. $yellq
(either we totally missed something or the pop on open will be
We wrote an industry essay on Generative
#AI
. (link at the bottom)
We discuss:
1. Generative AI primer and how LLMs work
2. The
#LLM
Ecosystem
3. Gen AI drawbacks and headwinds
4. Gen AI 1st and 2nd order effects
5. Industry participants that will benefit
1/N
Pernas Research Q4 Letter Posted
We discuss:
-How our investment outlook changed in 2023
-Our expectations for 2024
-Company characteristics we now favor
$NRP earnings today. Even with significant pricing pressure on soda ash and metallurgical coal, it still threw off about $60mm in FCF.
With NRP an investor gets a well aligned management team whose primary objective is to maximize the royalties for common unit holder, ~20%
We are long Xometry $XMTR
The leading disruptor in digital manufacturing and is in the ~second inning of a large secular growth story.
Business background & Thesis below 🧵
Which stocks do you own that fit this criteria:
The market believes they are weakening/declining but in reality they are getting stronger….(developed countries only ex Japan)
In public markets, it’s a terrible idea to invest in a shrinking business - even one shrinking very slowly - if that business doesn’t kick off large dividends.
There is no valuation that would tempt us into buying in this case.
$DOCS.L stock price getting hammered. Not a lot of bulls left in the rodeo.
We have added to our position.
We believe the challenges DOCS faces are category challenges that are compounded by operational issues that are temporary in nature.
Challenges are primarily wholesale
$ARQ now up 230% since purchase. We sourced the idea from
@24Fox614
Give him a follow. One of the few small cap warriors hell-bent on doing his own work + has a highly differentiated process.
I highly encourage any experienced investors following us to consider $RELY for their portfolio.
We believe the valuation is currently very attractive.
We have added multiple times since this initiation report (the price has continued to move against us for what we believe are
@LukeWolgram
Yes my friend, not full proof but very helpful:
Step 1: pull quarterized capex data from cash flow statement
Step 2: plot it on a time series
Step 3: you will be able to visually see the seasonality in the data. The midpoint line through this seasonality will be a good
Just screened all ~5300 NYSE/NASDAQ companies. We're looking for firms with recent negative net income but had 15 years of consecutive profitability pre-COVID.
96 names made the list. higher than we expected.
if you would like the names and sectors DM me your email and I'll
$REX up 30% on another great earnings as they capitalized on high crush spreads. They are also making good headway on their carbon sequestration facility and expect it to be done in Q2 2024. Surprising how underfollowed this company was.
Disclosure: We are long.
Our latest holding is $REX. We believe it has significant upside from these levels.
REX is an ethanol producer with about 3% market share in the USA. REX is run by sound operators, having never lost money in the last decade despite volatile commodity cycles.
REX stands out due
Curious if anyone primarily focused on multi-baggers (~3-year horizon let’s say) has outperformed the market long-term.
I guess it’s possible, but there will be many big misses. To make it work, you must let your winners grow 3x, 4x, 5x, even 10x without trimming, which is
@RammerCapital
Do good work and allocate time to interfacing with clients (outside world) and opportunity will present itself. Gone are the days where you can bury your head in analysis and expect to advance.
Quite possibly, the most valuable thing I learned in my career is that people who are in sales do not have analytical abilities, and people who are analysts do not have sales abilities. If you can do both well, you are breathing rarefied air and will go far.
Video call with an IR person earlier this year:
Me - "Hi, how are you?"
IR - "Doing great, just a little antsy on some news that is breaking soon"
15 minutes later.....stock is up 35% on the sale of one of their divisions
I looked back at my notes from Munger's book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack.
I have done my best to write down my favorite pull quotes from the book. If this gets enough likes I will post a part 2+.
🧵👇
We are posting a small write-up tomorrow on why we believe Berkshire is at risk of underperforming. $BRK
Hope bulls can chime in to tell us what we might be missing.
We posted our Card Factory analysis $CARD.L
also encourage anyone to check out previous CARD write-ups from these fine analysts:
@IggyOnInvesting
&
@david_katunaric
It’s never been easier to gain a qualitative understanding of company’s brand strength.
Spend a few hours synthesizing hundreds of social media comments across several platforms. After doing this you are 90%+ of the way there. The truth lives in the comments.
I have a dream that one day I will hear a CEO say this:
“While we consider our stock to be currently undervalued, we approach buybacks in a more counter-cyclical manner compared to our competitors. The return on investment from buybacks is amplified during market downturns.
Brett Blundy has announced an 8.17% stake in $CARD.L...unsure if this was done off-exchange with Teleious...if anyone knows more about UK reporting requirements here do tell
A 35% drop later, we took a small position in $AWE.L - Has leading SerDes (communication) tech and is levered to the chiplet and AI industry. Although it has some hair on it, management and the tech is there.
Our latest report is on Alphawave Semi ($AWE.L) Currently, we maintain a neutral rating, however, this may evolve should we observe indicators of successful execution.
We believe two factors are driving the
#AI
megatrend: Higher computation and higher networking needs. AI
This makes sense with micro cap companies but the larger the company the less your conviction should be predicated on how much you trust management. The horse > jockey.
Pernas Research (
@pernasresearch
) averages 80%+ 1y returns on their bullish stock pitches.
Their best pitch (so far) was for $LEU in November 2020. It shot up over 800% in the following year.
I'm sending out an interview with them on Sunday in my free newsletter (link in bio).
For those that like succinct stock ideas, follow
@StockCompil
....they do a great job reading fund letters and extracting ideas.
I am long the account at 345 followers. I give it ~2 months before they have more followers than us lol.
Unpopular opinion: Market prices do not adjust in magnitude quickly enough to news (that is 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥) in the short term.
Example:
If bad news (that is 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥) drops on Sunday for Stock XYZ the stock price reaction on Monday is generally an underreaction.
We've been yelling this but are quickly drowned out by the sound of unconditional applause from investors cheering on any buybacks....Good mgmt teams have thoughtful price metrics when coordinating 10b5-1 schedules with brokers. Most don't. Research paper posted in comments.
Most share repurchases tend to be a waste of capital because they're done at too high prices or during the wrong part of the cycle.
Unless it's a company with a deep moat and clear terminal value, you're likely better off with dividends.
$DOCS.L Dr. Martens releases FY 24 results
Largely as expected, revenue declined yoy by 12.3% (this was actually slightly better than we anticipated).
EBITDA down ~20% due to deleveraging effects.
The below chart beautifully explains the revenue decline.
Wholesale, primarily
@atelicinvest
for us at least it's most useful when diving into an industry and looking for certain industry participants that are exposed to a certain trend. for example "which power companies produce dry type transformers". Just helps with casting a wider net and not letting companies fall
Never on earth would I participate in this $GME frenzy but it doesn’t appear to me roaring kitty is doing anything legally wrong.
Nor is anything he is doing unethical. It’s just rank speculation.
He is speculating on a reaction to his cryptic posts and posts of his positions.
Our latest report is on Alphawave Semi ($AWE.L) Currently, we maintain a neutral rating, however, this may evolve should we observe indicators of successful execution.
We believe two factors are driving the
#AI
megatrend: Higher computation and higher networking needs. AI
The prospect of entrusting a $380 billion concentrated equity portfolio to a two-person team and hoping for a favorable outcome presents a significant and unaddressed risk. The need to address this has become even more pressing since the passing of Charlie Munger.
I was walking into Sprouts today and a homeless guy stopped me to ask for some food.
I told him I didn’t have any cash on me but I could buy him a sandwich. He then said that he would actually like me to buy him a $20 Visa gift card instead….Economy is doing just fine folks.
We wrote some lengthy papers on the Fed a while ago that maybe ~3 people were interested in....The topic is supremely important but if we boiled it down to just one takeaway, it would be the below image.
"Volatility is still quite low, and the market is actually... quite complacent," Pernas Research co-founder Deiya Pernas says, adding: "At the index level, there's been a complete departure of recessionary fears..."
@F_Compounders
Ty! Buffett will only invest in something where he has confidence in their staying power over very long time horizons. 10+ years. It might be much different if his capital was mobile
$DOCS.LON (Doc Martens) - Sentiment was exceedingly pessimistic to the extent that even after a ~20% rev decline the stock rallies. Wholesale segment has struggled but destocking looks to be in final innings. The category overall remains very challenged but we expect this name to
$NRP earnings highlights
Management continuing to pay down costly preferreds and warrants. Redeemed $178mm of preferreds and only .32mm warrants out of the original 4mm remain ( in 2024)
If coal prices stay at current levels, NRP could be completely debt free by end of 2024
On occasion, some of the stocks we own have been clued in on as a result of something we saw on X or someone's newsletter. (Overwhelmingly, the ideas we publish research on are driven from regular screens we run, alerts we have in place or other sourcing methods)
In the event
Think many investors conflate economies of scale and operating leverage.
Economies of scale is primarily gross margin expansion whereas operating leverage is a mechanical product of fixed cost dilution.
Another way to think about it is economies of scale is linked to variable
What deeply cynical people don't realize is that there are perceptive people who intentionally (and silently) avoid doing nice/kind things for them because they realize it will be taken in the wrong light.
cynicism is self-reinforcing. cynicism breeds isolation, and isolation,
We trimmed $TSSI after a large run up.
Matryoshka doll shoutout: thanks to
@joinyellowbrick
newsletter where we originally found
@Mike10947310
’s work on the name. 🫡
Any company you own where their product or service still provides great value for the customer?
Meaning there is still loads of consumer surplus even after all the price increases.
@capitalemployed
$RRGB Red Robin. Not without its risks but risk/reward skew is very attractive. Challenged category but management is taking the right steps and there is small evidence they are starting to comp positive.
I am hoping to clear up some misconceptions on a random Remitly $RELY & $WISE thread with
@SleepwellCap
@LuisVSanchez777
The core of the discussion was that $WISE has more of a moat and is cheaper so Remitly faces a tough competitor.
Why this comparison is wrong:
There are
I had a Zoom call with a 700mm company last week and the IR person had on a backwards cap! The quality of the company seemed to match the quality of his attire. PASS
Yet another sad example of a co that has repurchased its way into financial trouble.
$BIG with close to ~$700mm of buybacks in the last several years
Pour one out for all those LT shareholders that were excited buybacks were “returning capital”
@borrowed_ideas
@variance_swap
We wrote about some uranium plays in our data center essay. Link at bottom.
Summary:
Training an LLM like Chat GPT-4 with 1.7 trillion parameters cost about $100 million and used about 60 GWhrs of energy; equivalent to the total energy usage of 70k homes for one month.
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