The questions ranged from competitive moats to grey market exposure and shareholder communication. The responses shed light on how management views Evolution’s positioning, regulatory challenges, and strategic priorities, while also revealing where the company remains cautious about offering detail.

The Moat

When asked about threats to Evolution’s moat over the next 5–10 years, Linton focused more on internal discipline than external barriers. He acknowledged that “barriers to entry have always been relatively low, while the barriers to success are much higher,” noting the recent exits of competitors who underestimated the difficulty of building first-class live casino products.

The takeaway was clear: Evolution’s advantage is executional, not structural. The company’s moat depends on relentless innovation and an obsessive focus on player experience. “The threat is if Evolution would be complacent and stop pushing the industry forward,” Linton said, framing risk as primarily self-inflicted.

This view is both reassuring and sobering. It reinforces that Evolution operates in a winner-takes-most market where scale and execution drive advantage. Yet it also means the moat is only as strong as management’s ability to maintain its creative and operational intensity.

Online vs. Land-Based

Linton was emphatic that Evolution isn’t competing with Las Vegas-style casinos. “Land-based casinos are a very different type of entertainment than iGaming,” he said, pointing out that physical casinos have changed little in 15 years while online gaming continues to evolve.

More interestingly, he framed Evolution’s real competition as the broader entertainment ecosystem, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, rather than traditional gaming venues. This helps explain some of Evolution’s product strategy, including its television-inspired game shows and experiments with hyper-casual formats aimed at “a TikTok generation who wants everything faster.”

Whether this framing is entirely correct is debatable, but it reveals management’s product philosophy: entertainment value that transcends gambling, appealing even to non-betting audiences. It’s a vision of iGaming as content-driven entertainment, not just gambling infrastructure.

The Grey Market Elephant in the Room

The most anticipated questions centered on Evolution’s exposure to unregulated markets and the reputational risks that follow. Linton’s responses were notable more for what they didn’t say than for what they did.

He restated Evolution’s standard position: the company is a B2B supplier that doesn’t interact with end users, see player identities, or handle transactions. Regulatory responsibility, he said, rests with operators and their regulators. “It is between the operator and its supervising authority, the regulator, to agree on the terms for which the operator can offer products to end users.”

When asked about balancing short-term revenue from unregulated markets against long-term credibility, Linton offered polished but generic language: “Our goal is to stay ahead of regulatory developments, always doing what is right, while maximising business potential.”

What was missing was quantification of grey market exposure, examples of proactive exits, or discussion of revenue forgone for reputational reasons. While the answers acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue, they offered little transparency.

On management’s previous inability to quantify European black market exposure, Linton clarified terminology: “Unregulated markets do not equal illegal markets,” adding that accessing unlicensed sites isn’t illegal in jurisdictions with open internet access. While technically true, this sidestepped the central question: does Evolution know where its products are being used, and what does that data reveal?

Strategic Focus

Linton was clear about Evolution’s strategic limits. Sports betting? “Not on our agenda for the time being.” Moving into B2C? “We are and will stay a technological content supplier.” That stance is logical, running a B2C casino would demand new capabilities in payments, KYC, customer acquisition, and compliance across multiple jurisdictions. Diversifying would “blur our focus and industry-leading know-how in B2B.”

On U.S. sweepstakes, Linton said it’s “an immaterial part of North American revenues,” stressing regulatory caution over expansion. Evolution operates only where the legal framework is clear. The company sees sweepstakes as “quite popular,” but not a major growth lever.

This strategic conservatism is arguably a strength. Evolution has thrived by doing one thing exceptionally well rather than chasing adjacencies. The risk is that the company might miss opportunities if the market shifts dramatically.

Capital Allocation

With its capital-light model generating strong cash flow, capital allocation matters. Linton reaffirmed Evolution’s framework of balancing dividends and buybacks to suit shareholder preferences, a pragmatic if unspectacular approach.

More intriguing was a question about Evolution’s long-term identity: by 2035, will it look more like the AWS of iGaming (infrastructure) or the Netflix of iGaming (content)? Linton declined to choose, suggesting instead that “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw completely different types of distributors of our games in 2035 than what we have today.”

It’s an answer that hints at uncertainty about how the industry will evolve, while maintaining confidence in Evolution’s adaptability. Whether that confidence proves justified again depends on execution.

Communication Strategy

One of the most significant updates was the creation of a new Communications department aimed at “taking a more proactive stance in positioning Evolution and what we stand for.” Linton said media coverage has been “too unbalanced and tilted to the negative,” citing the Playtech/Black Cube report and the Georgia strike as cases where “people have not been critical enough about the source when they have read accusations on Evolution.”

The company’s historical approach hasn’t served it well in an environment where perception drives reality. Linton noted that Evolution holds “more than 500 investor meetings per year,” showing strong institutional engagement.

For private investors, however, that statistic underscores rather than resolves the information gap. Hundreds of closed-door meetings with institutions, with little public disclosure, create a two-tier environment. While Linton was right that “answering every question on X would require a different type of organisation and budget,” the asymmetry between institutional and retail access remains stark.

The key question is whether this new department will close that gap or simply refine messaging. Publishing conference transcripts, increasing IR website content, or hosting periodic public calls would be low-cost ways to level the playing field and improve transparency, if management is willing.

What I Learned (and Didn’t)

The Q&A provided useful insight into management’s mindset: confidence in execution, discipline around adjacencies, and recognition that communication must improve. The formation of a dedicated Communications department signals that management understands reputational damage has real costs.

What was missing was depth on the issues investors care most about, data on grey market exposure, examples of regulatory exits, or a framework for assessing when short-term revenue isn’t worth the long-term risk. On those points, the responses were polished but evasive.

For investors, the core tension remains: can Evolution sustain its edge while navigating regulatory complexity and rebuilding trust? Management believes the answer is yes. Whether execution matches that belief remains to be seen.

Finally, I want to thank Carl and the IR team for their time and thoughtful responses. As a private investor, I believe engagement with management shouldn’t be reserved for institutions. With technology enabling greater access, private investors will continue to play a growing role in capital markets and it’s encouraging to see Evolution recognise that.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Brokerage statements were basically useless. If you hold the same stock across multiple accounts, those statements tell you nothing about your true position size or your portfolio-level allocation.

In 2021 after years of inefficiency I found Portseido. Four years later it remains the backbone of my portfolio management process and the source of the verified performance data I share each month in this newsletter.

What Portseido Actually Does

Portseido is a portfolio tracking and analytics platform for individual investors who want institutional-grade tools without institutional complexity. It solves a simple problem, it consolidates holdings across multiple brokers into one accurate real-time view.

The real value is not the consolidation itself, it is what you can do once the data is unified.

The platform connects to brokers directly or accepts spreadsheet upload. Once connected it tracks transactions, dividends, fees and performance across your entire portfolio. The interface is clean, the visuals are clear and the analytics run deeper than any free tool I have used.

The Features That Matter

After four years of use these are the capabilities I rely on most:

1. Effortless Transaction Management

Every buy or sell updates in seconds. No formulas to maintain, no broken links, no version control issues. This sounds trivial until you have done it the hard way.

2. True Portfolio Allocation View

Portseido displays both market value and cost basis allocation at the portfolio level. When I held 25 positions across three brokers this was transformative. What looked like a 3% position at Broker A and 2 percent at Broker B was in reality a 5% allocation. This clarity helped me consolidate down to 15 positions.

3. Verified Performance Data

As someone who publishes monthly portfolio reviews, I need performance numbers that are accurate, auditable, and presentation-ready. Portseido’s performance tracking accounts for cash flows, timing, and dividends automatically. The platform generates performance data I can share with confidence, benchmarked against the S&P 500.

4. Automatic Dividend Tracking

Dividends are notoriously tedious to track manually, especially with reinvestment and timing considerations. Portseido automatically updates when dividends are declared and displays dividend yield, total dividend income, and projected future income. For income-focused investors, this feature alone justifies the subscription.

5. Fee Transparency

Portseido tracks fees as an absolute number and as a percentage of portfolio value. Seeing my annual fees as a percentage of AUM in 2023 prompted me to switch brokers. That single decision paid for the subscription several times over. Without this visibility I likely would not have noticed the fee drag until it compounded over years.

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The Workflow in Practice

My typical workflow is straightforward:

• Weekly check-ins: I log in to review allocation, performance, and any dividend updates. This takes 5-10 minutes.

• Transaction updates: After any buy or sell, I update Portseido immediately, usually takes under a minute.

• Monthly reviews: At month-end, I pull performance data, heat maps, and allocation charts for my newsletter. The visuals are export-ready.

The data visualisation tools are where Portseido truly shines. The charts I use most frequently include:

• Market value allocation pie chart: Shows current position sizing across the portfolio.

• Cost allocation pie chart: Reveals where my capital is actually deployed.

• Sector allocation breakdown: Highlights sector concentration and diversification gaps.

• Performance vs. S&P 500 benchmark: Tracks relative performance over time periods.

• Performance heat map by stock: Instantly identifies winners, losers, and laggards.

Time Saved

Before Portseido, I spent 2 to 3 hours per week maintaining spreadsheets, reconciling data, and building charts. That is more than 100 hours per year that should have gone to research, not admin.

Now, portfolio administration takes less than an hour per month, a reduction of more than 90 percent. For anyone who takes portfolio management seriously, that time recapture is meaningful.

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Cost

Portseido offers a free tier. The paid tier starts at $8 per month.

For context, if the fee transparency feature saves you even 10 basis points annually on a $100,000 portfolio, that is $100 per year. The tool pays for itself in the first month.

Who Should Use This

Portseido suits individual investors who:

• Hold positions across multiple brokers

• Want institutional-grade analytics without complexity

• Track performance seriously, especially if publishing results

• Need accurate dividend and fee tracking

• Value their time and want to eliminate manual admin

If you manage a personal portfolio with any seriousness, it is worth evaluating.

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Limitations

Portseido is not a financial planning tool. It does not offer tax optimisation features, and it is built around equities rather than multi-asset portfolios or alternatives. If you need derivatives tracking, you will need other tools.

However, the development team is highly responsive. When I have requested features or workflow improvements, they have been receptive and often implement suggestions. That responsiveness is rare and valuable.

There is also a mobile app for on-the-go monitoring.

Final Assessment

After four years and hundreds of hours of use, Portseido is now indispensable to my investment process. It turned portfolio tracking from a labor-heavy chore into a streamlined, insight-driven workflow.

The platform does not make decisions for you, it gives you the data infrastructure to make better decisions yourself. For disciplined, fundamentally driven investors, that is exactly what a tool should do.

If you are still using spreadsheets or relying on broker statements alone, you are operating with incomplete information. Portseido solves that cleanly and at low cost.

Sign up for Portseido

If you’d like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

Part 1 explored how early competitive advantages and founder mentality became organisational DNA.

Part 2 traced how culture scaled, from marketing and logistics infrastructure to ecosystem building.

Part 3 examines the company’s response to existential competition, the deliberate succession from founder to professional management, and what happens when an organisation becomes bigger than any individual leader.

It’s the conclusion to understanding not just Mercado Libre, but what their model reveals about building companies that endure.

When Marcos Galperin Stepped Back

When Marcos Galperin announced his departure as CEO on 21 May, 2025 (26 years after founding Mercado Libre), he did something unexpected: he made it look like the most rational decision possible.

Not a victory lap. Not a retirement announcement. A deliberate step back, taken precisely because the company had matured enough that it no longer needed him in that specific role.

This moment represents the culmination of everything Mercado Libre has built. And it reveals truths about scaling, competition, and leadership that extend far beyond one company.

Mercado Libre Specific Insights

Why This Transition Works

Marcos didn’t leave because he was bored or because Mercado Libre had plateaued. He left because the organisational design patterns his team built over 26 years made it possible and necessary.

The succession to Ari Szarfsztejn wasn’t improvised, it was architected. Three years before stepping down, Marcos moved Stelleo Tolda, his Brazilian co-pilot of 20+ years, aside to give Ari broader visibility in an executive role. This wasn’t a demotion; it was strategic positioning.

Ari proved himself managing Mercado Envíos through the pandemic (when volumes grew 5x overnight) and its subsequent expansion into logistics, technology infrastructure, and supplier relationships. He had already been making company-wide decisions. The CEO title simply formalised what was already true.

But here’s the deeper pattern: Marcos built an organisation where the founder’s departure doesn’t create a vacuum. Sean Summers describes walking into Mercado Libre and being shocked by how “leaderless” decisions felt, not because no one was leading, but because leadership was distributed. Ideas mattered more than titles.

The Board challenged Marcos (Henrique Dubugras explicitly questioned why he was leaving at all). The management team operated with founder mentality even as the company scaled to $30 billion in revenue.

This is organisational design working at scale. Most succession failures happen because founders build cults of personality. Marcos built something different: a culture where the founder is systemically replaceable, even as his imprint remains.

The Paranoia Mechanism

One quote from Marcos crystallises everything: “Only the paranoid survive.” This isn’t motivational fluff, it’s a design principle embedded in quarterly reviews, NPS obsession, and strategic planning.

Mercado Libre has dominated Latin America. They’ve beaten Amazon in multiple markets. Yet when Chinese competitors entered Brazil, Marcos didn’t defend conservatively, he doubled down. The company announced a 76% reduction in free shipping costs (from R$79 to R$19 in Brazil) during his final act as CEO.

A massive investment in a market they already led. Why? Because in their view, the moment you defend a position is the moment you lose it.

Quarterly business reviews focused not on what went well, but on what could go wrong. NPS was a forcing function to uncover root causes. When customer satisfaction stalled, they rebuilt technology infrastructure for years. When logistics depended on a single provider and that provider struck, they diversified aggressively.

This isn’t paranoia as pathology, it’s paranoia as operational discipline. It’s what prevents a $30 billion company from behaving like one.

Strategic Trade-offs That Reveal Hidden Logic

Marcos and team made a striking decision about content: they said no. Amazon built original series and created lock-in through entertainment. Mercado Libre looked at that and concluded it wasn’t in their DNA. Instead, they partnered with Disney and local producers, maintaining focus on commerce and fintech.

The insight: the biggest companies sometimes win by not doing everything competitors do. When mobile came, they built apps, not studios. When AI emerged, they focused on agent-based commerce and cost reduction, not robotics.

Most large companies suffer from “me-too” strategic dilution. Mercado Libre’s discipline, its refusal to chase categories outside its competitive advantage, is why it remains dominant.

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Universal Business Principles

Founder Departure as Strength, Not Ending

The conventional narrative says founder departures signal decline. Mercado Libre inverts this. Marcos stepping down signals something more radical: an organisation confident enough to outlast its founder, and a founder secure enough to step away from what he loves most.

This only works when three conditions exist:

1. The successor shares the founder’s values but brings different capabilities. Ari is a strategist with logistics expertise.

2. The organisation has codified culture, not just lived it. Leadership behaviors, debate protocols, and decision-making principles are documented.

3. The founder transitions, not disappears. Marcos remains Chairman, engaged but not in daily execution.

Most founder transitions fail because they’re treated as binary (founder stays or leaves). Mercado Libre shows a third path: founder transforms.

Competing Without Imitation

When Amazon entered Latin America in 2013, Mercado Libre’s Board debated closing Mexico. The conventional move would have been retreat. Instead, under pressure from Micky Malka and Javi Oliván, they multiplied marketing spend sevenfold. Their message: “Every square metre of Latin America will cost you.”

Most companies, when facing stronger competitors, either imitate or retreat. Mercado Libre did neither. They played harder at what they were already good at.

When Chinese competitors arrived, the same pattern repeated. Marcos didn’t panic. He adapted, building supply chains from Asia, adjusting pricing but stayed true to Mercado Libre’s model.

Leadership as Saying No

Marcos doesn’t attend quarterly earnings calls. He skips nearly all conferences, investor meetings, and media appearances. This might seem counterintuitive for a public company CEO, but his logic is clear: every hour spent externally is an hour not spent learning internally.

He divides his time roughly three ways: one-third with his teams, one-third studying Mercado Libre, one-third on family and learning. The remaining time is blocked and unavailable.

The lesson: leadership bandwidth is finite. The best companies protect it ruthlessly. They say no to the good to preserve time for the critical.

The Role of Uncomfortable Board Members

When Henrique Dubugras questioned Marcos’s succession decision, he wasn’t being contrarian for effect. He was doing exactly what a Board should do: create friction and force clarity.

Marcos’s reaction? Relief. Not because Henrique changed his mind, but because a Board willing to challenge him, respectfully and rigorously, is exactly what’s needed during major transitions.

Boards add most value not through approval but through calibrated skepticism. Marcos’s most trusted Board members, like Micky Malka and Javi Oliván, understood tech deeply and weren’t afraid to contradict him. Henrique played the same role here.

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The Unfinished Mountain

Marcos closes his narrative with a reflection on climbing. On Aconcagua, there’s a base camp every 2,000 metres. You reach what feels like a summit, only to look up and see 25 more peaks ahead. “It never ends,” he says. “That’s the truth.”

Mercado Libre faces Chinese competitors with relentless execution, AI reshaping commerce, and volatile regional economies. The company isn’t resting, it’s competing perpetually.

But the infrastructure they’ve built, distributed leadership, a culture that treats complacency as an existential threat, and a proven succession model, positions them better than most for what’s next.

The lesson isn’t that they’ve figured everything out. It’s that they’ve figured out how to keep learning, adapting, and evolving as an organisation, not just as individuals. What makes Mercado Libre worth watching is that they’ve built the tools to navigate whatever comes.

This is the final instalment of a three-part series on the climbers & scalers podcast.
If you’ve followed along from the beginning, I hope you enjoyed it. There are few case studies that reveal as much about scaling, leadership, and resilience as Mercado Libre’s story.

I’ll personally be referring back to this series in the future because the lessons here about organisational design, discipline, and founder evolution are timeless.

If you’d like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

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The Chat is a space designed to facilitate, real-time discussions, share knowledge and debate ideas with fellow investors. Join the conversation.

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

There were no subscribers, no community, just me documenting my investment decisions and hoping to connect with a few like-minded investors.

Today, we’re 9k strong, spanning continents, experience levels, and investment styles. Some of you have been here since the early days, others joined last week, but you’re all part of what has become a truly global community of independent investors.

I started this newsletter as a finance professional and private investor who wanted to apply the same analytical framework I use in my day job to my own portfolio. The mission was simple: understand the business behind the stock. Think like an owner, not a renter.

Over these five years, I’ve analysed hundreds of companies. I’ve dissected quarterly earnings until 2 AM. And the messages I’ve received from many of you, telling me that this newsletter has given you the confidence to manage your own portfolio, make better decisions, and think more clearly about investing, have made every hour worth it.

But here’s the thing: I need your help.

As we enter year six, I want to make sure The Wolf of Harcourt Street continues to deliver exactly what you need, not what I think you need, not what other newsletters do, but what matters most to you.

So I’ve put together a short survey (15 questions, roughly 5 minutes) to help me understand:

• What content resonates most with you (and what doesn’t)

• Which companies and sectors you want more coverage on

• How the newsletter fits into your investment process

• What would make this even more valuable in 2025 and beyond

Start Survey

As a thank you, everyone who completes the survey will be entered to win a copy of The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life by Morgan Housel, his highly anticipated new book releasing soon. One winner will be drawn after 7 days.

Your feedback will directly shape the future of this newsletter. I’ll be reading every single response, and I’ll share the aggregate results in a future edition. Your individual responses will remain 100% anonymous.

This community has grown because of your referrals, your engagement in the chat, and your thoughtful questions. Now I’m asking you to help make the next five years even better than the first.

The survey closes in 7 days. Take 5 minutes today:

Start Survey

Thank you for being here. Whether you’ve been along for the ride since November 2020 or just joined yesterday, I’m grateful to have you as part of this community.

Here’s to the next chapter.

P.S. Seriously, your input matters. This isn’t a box-ticking exercise. The insights from this survey will inform every deep dive, every earnings analysis, and every strategic decision I make for this newsletter in 2026. Don’t hold back.

If you’d like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

Join the community of informed investors – subscribe now to receive the latest content straight to your inbox each week and never miss out on valuable investment insights.

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The Chat is a space designed to facilitate, real-time discussions, share knowledge and debate ideas with fellow investors. Join the conversation.

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

While I achieved a profit in absolute terms, TXN underperformed the S&P 500 by roughly 60% during my holding period. In a portfolio management context, it was a drag on performance and an opportunity cost.

As I work to consolidate my portfolio to a maximum of 15 high-conviction positions, TXN emerged as an obvious candidate for exit. More importantly, as I reflected on the Investment Philosophy I recently articulated, it became clear that this position falls outside the framework that should guide my capital allocation decisions.

The Original Thesis

When I initiated my position in Q3 2022, the decision seemed straightforward. I had no exposure to the semiconductor industry, a critical sector in the modern economy. TXN, with its leadership in analog and embedded processing chips, appeared to offer a way to gain that exposure through a quality business.

The valuation seemed compelling: TXN traded at roughly 18 times forward earnings. For a company with TXN’s market position and reputation for operational excellence, that multiple looked reasonable, particularly during a broader market selloff.

But here’s where my analysis fell short: that forward earnings multiple was not a true representation of the business’s normalised earning power. The cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry meant I was looking at a temporary snapshot, not a reliable baseline. I thought I was buying quality at a discount. In reality, I was buying cyclicality at what turned out to be an inflated earnings base.

Being Early Is the Same as Being Wrong

One of the core assumptions in my thesis was that I was buying near the trough of TXN’s cycle. The semiconductor industry had begun showing signs of inventory corrections and demand softness. My intention was to position for the recovery, benefiting from the eventual upturn while collecting a reasonable dividend in the meantime.

The problem? That trough has lasted far longer than I anticipated. The downcycle has been deeper and more prolonged than my initial analysis (and Wall Street analysts) suggested. In the subsequent years, TXN’s EPS declined by 25% in 2023 and 26% in 2024.

In investing, being early looks identical to being wrong, at least in terms of portfolio performance. The opportunity cost of capital sitting in a position that goes sideways, or worse, declines, while the broader market advances is very real.

This experience reinforces a lesson every investor eventually learns the hard way: cyclical industries are extraordinarily difficult to time. Even with a solid grasp of business fundamentals, predicting the inflection point requires near-perfect foresight of macroeconomic conditions, supply chain inventory dynamics, and end-market demand across multiple sectors.

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The Slow Compounder That Wasn’t Predictable Enough

My initial vision for TXN was that it would serve as a steady compounder, a business that might not deliver explosive growth but would generate consistent double-digit returns through a combination of modest growth, margin expansion, and shareholder returns.

The challenge is that this characterisation doesn’t align with reality. While TXN has strong advantages in analog chips and a record of solid execution, the inherent cyclicality of its business makes it far less predictable than a true compounder should be.

Consider Visa, another holding that plays a similar “steady compounder” role in my portfolio. Visa currently trades at around 28 times forward earnings, while TXN trades near 30 times. On the surface, valuations look similar. But the critical difference lies in earnings predictability.

Visa’s model, taking a small percentage of payment transactions, is remarkably stable and predictable. I can forecast Visa’s earnings several years out with reasonable confidence because consumer spending, while cyclical, is far more consistent than semiconductor demand.

TXN, by contrast, serves markets including industrial, automotive, personal electronics, enterprise systems, and communications equipment, all subject to inventory cycles, capital expenditure swings, and economic sensitivity. When I try to forecast TXN’s earnings three to five years out, the error bars are dramatically wider. Given that uncertainty, does it make sense to pay a similar multiple to a business like Visa? I’ve concluded that it doesn’t.

Outside My Investment Philosophy

In my recent article outlining my investment philosophy, I emphasised several core principles:

1. Understanding the business comes first.

Every investment should begin with deep research into the business model, revenue and margin drivers, competitive advantages, and key risks. While I understood TXN’s business at a high level, I underestimated how the cyclicality would dominate other considerations.

2. Platform businesses with structural advantages.

The most compelling long-term opportunities tend to operate as platforms or ecosystems, benefiting from network effects, switching costs, and large under-penetrated markets. TXN doesn’t fit this profile. While it has advantages in analog chips, it’s not a platform business with winner-take-most dynamics.

3. Long-term mindset with conviction.

My edge lies in holding through volatility when the long-term thesis remains intact. But with TXN, my conviction eroded rather than strengthened.

The consolidation of my portfolio to 15 positions isn’t just about reducing position count, it’s about ensuring every holding represents a business I truly understand, believe in, and can hold through volatility. TXN no longer meets that standard.

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Why ASML Stays While TXN Goes

Some readers might wonder: if you’re exiting TXN due to semiconductor cyclicality, why continue holding ASML?

The answer lies in the quality and uniqueness of ASML’s business model. ASML holds a complete monopoly on Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, essential for manufacturing the most advanced semiconductor nodes. Every leading-edge chipmaker, TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, depends on ASML’s machines.

This monopoly means that while ASML’s revenue fluctuates with semiconductor capital expenditure cycles, its market share and pricing power remain unassailable. The company essentially serves as a toll gate for advanced chip manufacturing.

TXN, though in a strong position, doesn’t have this degree of competitive insulation. It competes across markets with players like Analog Devices, and its profitability depends on whether customers choose TXN’s chips over others.

Quality matters enormously in investing. While both businesses are cyclical, ASML’s structural position is simply superior, which justifies maintaining exposure despite volatility.

Key Lessons

Every investment, whether successful or not, offers lessons. Here’s what I’m taking away from TXN:

• Cyclical industries are exceptionally hard to value and time.

  The margin for error is thin, and being early costs real money. The market doesn’t reward patience if the opportunity cost is high.

• Predictability is worth paying for.

  A business that generates consistent, visible earnings can be more valuable than higher but volatile returns.

• Investment philosophy should be a filter.

  Writing down your investment principles is only valuable if you use them. When a position no longer fits, acknowledging that reality is the disciplined choice.

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Final Thoughts

Selling TXN wasn’t a decision I made lightly. Three years of holding creates a certain attachment, even when the analytical case weakens. But discipline in investing means making decisions based on current facts and forward-looking analysis, not sunk costs or emotion.

My understanding of what belongs in the portfolio has evolved, and my investment philosophy has become more defined. Articulating why TXN no longer fits has strengthened my conviction in the framework I’m applying.

For those building their own portfolios, periodically evaluate whether each position still aligns with your philosophy. Markets evolve, businesses evolve, and your own understanding deepens. What made sense three years ago may not today. The key is having the intellectual honesty to recognise it and the discipline to act on it.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

Join the community of informed investors – subscribe now to receive the latest content straight to your inbox each week and never miss out on valuable investment insights.

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The Chat is a space designed to facilitate, real-time discussions, share knowledge and debate ideas with fellow investors. Join the conversation.

If you found today's edition helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues on social media or via email. Your support helps to continue to provide this newsletter for FREE!

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

If you are new to this newsletter, I recommend checking out Part 1 first, which covers episodes 1–9 and explores MELI’s philosophy and competitive frameworks.

Mercado Libre-Specific Insights

Nuclear Winter Strategy

Nico Szekasy’s account of the dot-com crash provides the clearest window into MELI’s strategic discipline during crisis. When the internet bubble burst in 2001, most companies scrambled for survival. MELI had already implemented what Szekasy calls “nuclear winter” planning, assuming capital markets would remain frozen indefinitely.

The company’s response was surgical: they cut teams in half while preserving $50 million in capital, centralised operations from nine countries into Buenos Aires, and shifted from growth-at-all-costs to a path-to-profitability mindset. This was not just cost-cutting, it was strategic repositioning. By 2005, they achieved profitability with substantial reserves intact, a decisive advantage when acquisition opportunities arose.

This experience created institutional memory around capital efficiency that persists today. Unlike competitors who optimised for favorable conditions, MELI built assuming adversity as the baseline. This explains their current approach to expansion and investment, always maintaining flexibility for the next downturn.

The Inconscience Advantage

The creation of Mercado Pago stands as one of the most successful platform extensions in e-commerce, yet Paula Arregui’s candid reflection on the role of “inconscience” reveals its unlikely origins. She noted, “If we had fully understood the complexity of what we were attempting, we might never have started.”

Her team’s early reality, manually processing transactions, entering card data into spreadsheets, faxing information, even creating physical coupons, illustrates both desperation and grit. This inconscience advantage enabled MELI to act when exhaustive feasibility studies might have paralyzed them.

The breakthrough was not technological but behavioral: solving trust between strangers rather than merely processing payments. By holding funds until buyers confirmed satisfaction and creating reputation systems, MELI turned the biggest barrier to adoption into a competitive moat. From manual processes to neural network fraud detection, this “naive” start enabled sophisticated solutions that perfectionism might have delayed.

70% Pay Reduction Philosophy

Nico Berman’s choice to take a 70% salary cut to join MELI, framing it as “investment in education,” highlights a recruitment philosophy that traditional compensation frameworks miss. His path from spotting a billboard to becoming employee number 8, shows how MELI hired for curiosity and learning capacity rather than narrow expertise.

This model filtered for conviction-driven employees. Significant financial sacrifice meant skin in the game that stock options alone could not match. The fact that many early MELI employees went on to found venture capital firms validates this human capital investment thesis.

Regulatory Arbitrage

Ozzie Giménez’s account of Mercado Pago’s battles with financial incumbents highlights MELI’s regulatory arbitrage playbook. Rather than waiting for permission, they built operations first, forcing regulators to adapt.

Because no regulation existed for businesses like Mercado Pago, MELI shaped new frameworks to its advantage. In markets dominated by monopolistic acquirer networks, they worked with competition authorities to pry open access. This created durable advantages that technology alone could not.

Amazon Counterplay & Global Learning

Germán Spataro’s perspective on Amazon’s entry into Brazil highlights MELI’s most sophisticated competitive analysis. Amazon expanded cautiously through books and categories, but MELI understood the real threat: Amazon’s operational excellence and customer obsession.

MELI responded by accelerating logistics, deepening local integration, and maintaining faster decision cycles. They bet that Amazon’s Seattle-centered approvals would slow local adaptation. As Spataro noted, “Brazil is the main country for Mercado Libre, while for Amazon it is just one of many.”

At the same time, MELI imported models from global peers, particularly Chinese fintech and e-commerce players. By adapting QR payments and money-market funds to Latin America, MELI leapfrogged local financial limitations. Remarkably, QR payment penetration in Argentina surpassed e-commerce usage, evidence of successful adaptation over invention.

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Universal Business Principles

Inconscience–Competence

Arregui’s “inconscience” insight frames a broader principle: productive ignorance vs destructive ignorance. Productive ignorance allows teams to attempt the “impossible” without being constrained by industry baggage.

Firms can harness this by creating “ignorance buffers”, leaders articulate bold visions while shielding teams from paralysing detail. Hiring should balance domain expertise with fresh perspectives, avoiding teams that only optimise for known constraints.

Income-for-Learning

Berman’s salary sacrifice illustrates treating career transitions as educational investments rather than financial optimisations. Organisations can apply this by enabling employees to invest in skill-building periods that trade short-term productivity for long-term returns. Periods of reduced current income/productivity in exchange for learning acceleration can create exponential future value.

Scarcity Planning

Planning for scarcity during abundance creates resilience. MELI’s nuclear winter mindset exposed inefficiencies and forced resource discipline. Any organisation can benefit from occasionally planning as if today’s favourable conditions will vanish.

This mental exercise often reveals operational inefficiencies, strategic dependencies, and resource allocation opportunities that aren’t visible during normal conditions. A recent example of this is the ZIRP era which fuelled a startup boom and tech growth but caught many businesses off guard when it ended.

Friction Analysis

MELI’s evolution from marketplace to payments, logistics, and credit reflects systematic friction analysis. Each expansion solved a customer pain point and transformed it into a business opportunity.

This framework applies broadly: every user journey contains friction points that represent either barriers to remove or services to monetize. The strategic choice depends on whether eliminating friction increases platform usage more than monetising it increases revenue.

Competitive Intelligence

Rather than benchmarking, MELI practiced multi-level competitive learning: tactical copying, strategic adaptation, and cultural pattern recognition. This enabled rapid iteration while avoiding costly strategic errors.

Talent Compound Interest

Early hiring choices generated compound returns through talent ecosystems. Former MELI employees became founders and investors, strengthening MELI’s reputation as a “talent factory” and attracting future high-potential hires. Organisations that treat employee development as ecosystem investment rather than pure cost can access better human capital at lower costs than competitors optimising for employee retention alone.

Continuous Beta

MELI operationalised continuous beta, treating everything as permanently improvable. The approach involved structured experimentation, fast testing systems, and institutional learning capture which prevented chaos and turned permanent iteration into a growth engine.

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Conclusion

Episodes 10–19 reveal how MELI systematically built organisational capabilities that compound. Talent, regulatory navigation, and global learning created a self-reinforcing system.

MELI’s success lies in shifting from marketplace to platform mindset, treating every challenge as a platform extension opportunity. Payments, logistics, and credit were not side bets but integral expressions of this philosophy.

For investors, the key takeaway is that MELI’s moat extends beyond financials into institutionalised innovation systems. For business leaders, the lesson is to build organisations that convert external shocks into enduring advantages.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the climbers & scalers podcast. The final installment will cover MELI’s global expansion philosophy and long-term positioning.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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I have followed the company for many years, so this release got me very excited. And I was not disappointed. Very early into the first episode, I realised I needed to sit down with a pen and paper to take notes. Each podcast is so rich in detail that I decided to write a three-part series sharing my key learnings and insights.

These insights fall into two categories: company-specific takeaways that reframe MELI’s competitive advantages, and universal business principles that apply across all organisations. Even if you are not interested in MELI, there are lessons every investor can apply to their own universe. Part 1 covers episodes 1 to 9.

Mercado Libre-Specific Insights

Platform-First

The most striking revelation from Chief Operating Officer Dani Rabinovich concerns MELI’s fundamental technology philosophy. His assertion that “we are not a technology company, we are a product company” may sound counterintuitive for a firm trading at technology multiples. Yet this distinction reveals a deeper insight: MELI’s technology exists only to solve user problems, never as an end in itself.

This philosophy manifested most dramatically during the “Ground Zero” project, when MELI rebuilt its entire platform from scratch while being a public company, spending nearly two years without releasing new features. The courage to prioritise scalability over short-term metrics explains their current ability to handle massive transaction volumes that would have been impossible with their original architecture.

The transition from closed, monolithic systems to open, loosely coupled platforms enabled both technological and organisational scaling. Rabinovich noted that “the hiring curve looks completely flat for 10–13 years, and starts an exponential curve since we finished New World.” This connection between technology architecture and human capital efficiency is rarely discussed, yet it is critical for understanding MELI’s operating leverage.

The Amazon Paradox

Perhaps the most counterintuitive insight comes from Rabinovich’s assertion that “Amazon was the best thing that ever happened to us.” While conventional analysis views Amazon’s Latin American presence as a threat, MELI’s leadership suggests the opposite. Competing against Amazon forced MELI to pursue operational excellence that might not have emerged otherwise.

This explains MELI’s seemingly irrational investments in logistics infrastructure that analysts often questioned. By benchmarking every operational decision against Amazon, MELI created an internal discipline rare among Latin American companies. As former CFO Pedro Arnt emphasised, the “build to scale” mentality requires designing every system for 100x growth if you want to compete with global leaders.

Network Effects

Rabinovich’s tennis metaphor, “to win Wimbledon you have to beat everyone, not almost everyone,” illustrates why MELI has maintained market leadership despite well-funded competitors. Network effects are winner-take-all. Second place has little value.

This insight explains MELI’s aggressive market share defense and willingness to sacrifice short-term profitability for dominance. Their strategy prioritises position over immediate returns, recognising that in network-effect businesses, being number two is close to being irrelevant.

Learning From eBay

The partnership with eBay provided MELI with an invaluable case study of what not to do. Former CFO and COO Hernán Kazah described the “Lake Como moment” when eBay shifted from startup mentality to corporate complacency. That lesson continues to influence MELI’s culture today.

Arnt’s observation that “Amazon should never have happened the way it did, if eBay had done things right” reflects MELI’s deep understanding of competitive dynamics. The company learned that technical superiority and market position mean nothing without continuous innovation and user focus. This underpins their perpetual beta mentality, even as market leader.

Talent Philosophy

The Sole Dematteo mobile app story reveals MELI’s approach to talent development. Instead of punishing employees who built competing products, management acquired the application and promoted its creators. This unconventional response rewarded initiative while building loyalty and capturing innovation.

Rabinovich’s hiring philosophy, preferring problem-solvers over domain experts, explains MELI’s success in new verticals. Adaptability is prioritised over narrow expertise, which is essential for a platform expanding across multiple business lines.

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Universal Business Principles

Obsession

The most powerful universal insight concerns sustainable competitive advantage. Rabinovich distinguishes between those who “like to have read” and those who “like to read.” The latter embodies obsession, which drives excellence.

He cites guitarist Paco de Lucia’s 12-hour daily practice as an example of obsession translating into mastery. Companies that enable employees to channel this kind of drive into their work will outperform those optimising only for balance.

Rabinovich’s “journey versus destination” mentality, described through his tango practice, underscores the value of enjoying the process of improvement. Teams that thrive on progress rather than outcomes sustain performance longer.

Communication

The 80-15-5 communication framework, 80% smooth operations, 15% tension, 5% rough discussions, offers a practical approach to team dynamics. High-performing groups require occasional conflict to maintain standards while preserving relationships.

Sole Dematteo’s testimony about working with Rabinovich confirms the framework’s effectiveness. By ensuring that criticism targets ideas, not people, MELI fosters direct communication and faster resolution.

Focus

Hernán Kazah’s insight that “good management is excluding, it’s leaving out” highlights the importance of saying no. In environments with infinite opportunities, success depends more on what you avoid than what you pursue.

This discipline was evident during the dot-com crash when MELI closed its Miami offices despite ample capital. Focus enabled survival.

Exponential Thinking

Kazah’s Stanford experience, which exposed him to thinkers who “disrespected the linear process and encouraged exponential thinking,” reveals why MELI designed for scale from day one.

Rather than expanding gradually, MELI launched as a regional player, reflecting the mental model of exponential leaps over incremental steps.

Paranoia and Happiness

Rabinovich’s claim that “paranoid can be extremely happy” challenges traditional leadership wisdom. He distinguishes clinical paranoia from operational paranoia, the constant drive to improve and fix problems.

Happiness, in this view, comes from enjoying improvement itself. Teams that thrive on identifying weaknesses rather than avoiding them build durable competitive advantages.

Ecosystems

The move from closed to open systems reflects not just technology but business philosophy. When companies position themselves as platforms that empower others, they create ecosystems that scale beyond their direct control.

This principle extends beyond tech. Any business that enables third-party success while capturing value gains an edge over vertically integrated competitors.

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Conclusion

The climbers & scalers podcast highlights how Mercado Libre’s success comes from principles that challenge conventional business wisdom. Their emphasis on long-term thinking over quarterly optimisation, obsessive improvement over outcome celebration, and systematic paranoia over comfort offers a blueprint for enduring competitive advantage.

For investors, this suggests MELI’s premium valuation reflects more than financials, it represents systematic advantages in decision-making, talent, and strategy that compound over time. For business leaders, it offers practical frameworks for building cultures that sustain growth over decades.

Without MELI’s use of AI voice cloning, English speakers like myself would not have been able to enjoy this masterpiece. We are lucky to have access.

This article is Part 1 of a three-part series on key insights from the climbers & scalers podcast. Future installments will cover MELI’s expansion strategies and fintech evolution.

If you’d like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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This is an enormous engine for revenue growth, and it got me thinking: What could Nu’s revenue look like in 2030 simply from existing customers maturing, without adding a single new customer?

Customers by Cohort

The starting point for my analysis was Nu’s 123 million customers as of Q2 2025. By reviewing quarterly filings, I calculated the net new customers added each quarter and grouped them into cohorts by months since origination. For example, all customers added in Q1 2025 fall into the 2–12 months since origination bucket.

One thing really stood out: 66% (81 million) of Nu’s customers joined within the past four years or less. This shows not only how young most of Nu’s customer base is, but also how under-monetised it remains. At 48 months since origination, monthly ARPAC is just $10.90.

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Annual Revenue by Cohort

Using ARPAC and customer data by cohort, I estimated annual revenue at Q2 2025. It’s no surprise that customers with Nu for less than two years account for just 16% of total revenue despite representing 32% of total customers.

The more interesting point is that cohorts with 60+ months of tenure account for 55% of total revenue while representing only 34% of total customers. The longer a cohort stays, the more valuable it becomes. Nu’s extremely strong retention rate allows it to consistently up-sell and cross-sell, supporting customers as they progress through their financial journey.

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The 2030 View

By maturing each cohort five years, we can forecast what the customer mix might look like in 2030. The shift toward late-stage cohorts is glaringly obvious: by 2030, 68% of customers will have been with Nu for 8+ years.

This maturation sets the stage for explosive revenue growth. With 84 million customers on track to generate $27.30 in monthly ARPAC, this group alone could produce $27.4 billion in annual revenue by 2030. In total, today’s 123 million customers could generate $37 billion in 2030 revenue, more than 3x the $11.5 billion reported in 2024.

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Conclusion

There are a number of caveats to this analysis that are worth pointing out if not already apparent. The first major one is the assumption that the existing ARPAC by cohort will continue into the future. There is no guarantee of this, as many factors influence this single data point. Conditions outside the company’s control, such as a global recession, could materially impact its ability to grow its credit portfolio, which has been the key driver of revenue growth in recent years.

This assumption also ignores the potential upside of ARPAC increasing for each cohort by 2030. In just one year, the mature ARPAC cohort has risen from $25 in Q2 2024 to $27 in Q2 2025. It is likely this figure will climb further by 2030, even from inflation alone, not to mention Nu’s ongoing launch of new products and services.

Another factor left out of this analysis is the impact of new customers. With a high degree of certainty, Nu’s customer base in 2030 will be larger than it is today. The company is adding roughly 4 million new customers each quarter, and while this growth rate will naturally slow as market penetration increases, it is highly probable that the customer base will keep expanding. The only scenario that could prevent this is an asteroid hitting Earth.

With all that being said, there is a credible path to a 3x increase in revenue by 2030.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Southeast Asia shipped 43.6 million e-commerce parcels daily in 2024, nearing U.S. volumes, demonstrating the region's enormous scale and continued growth. Who are the dominant players, and what does it mean for investors?

This article draws on data from the Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2025 report by Momentum Works.

Shopee’s Widening Moat

Shopee’s lead is growing. The platform commanded 52% of Southeast Asia e‑commerce GMV in 2024 (up from 48% in 2023), reaching $66.8 billion. While growth has moderated since the pandemic, Sea Limited (Shopee’s parent company) is guiding for ~20–25% GMV growth in 2025 with improving margins.

Shopee’s edge lies in scale and disciplined execution. The company has moved away from aggressive price wars to focus on unit economics. For example, after years of subsidies, both Shopee and TikTok are now automating ad buys and cutting unprofitable programs. This focus on ROI has helped Shopee post positive EBITDA for two consecutive years.

Several factors reinforce Shopee’s position:

• Scale & Ecosystem: Shopee benefits from a massive, young user base and a broad catalog, from consumer goods to live commerce. It integrates Monee (digital payments, credit, insurance) directly into the platform. In Q1 2025, Monee’s loan book grew 60% YoY, feeding credit into Shopee purchases and driving loyalty.

• Innovations: Shopee keeps users engaged with live streaming, in-app games, and mobile top-ups. Logistics have also improved through infrastructure investments like in-house warehouses and Shopee Mall guaranteed shipping, boosting service levels and monetization.

• Brands & Marketplace: Shopee has evolved from a low-cost focus to offering more local and international brands. While maintaining its broad marketplace, it also curates premium sellers for Shopee Mall, increasing its take-rate through ads and value-added services.

These factors together give Shopee both scale advantages and improving unit economics. In 2024, Shopee grew GMV by 28% (including regions beyond Southeast Asia), breaking $100 billion while turning profitable. Shopee has built a durable moat in user engagement and monetisation, putting it in a strong position to harvest Southeast Asia’s digital growth.

Competitor Snapshot – TikTok, Lazada, Others

TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop has rapidly gained ground. Its Southeast Asia GMV quadrupled in two years to reach $22.6 billion in 2024. After acquiring Tokopedia in December 2023 and merging Indonesian operations, TikTok is now pursuing disciplined expansion. Instead of relying on subsidies, it’s emphasising ROI, positioning social commerce as a discovery engine for sellers.

Momentum works estimate the TikTok/Tokopedia combo now commands around 28% of Southeast Asia’s platform GMV. Its growth, especially among Gen Z, means Shopee cannot afford complacency.

Lazada

Once a regional leader, Lazada (owned by Alibaba), has ceded ground to Shopee but is stabilising. Its GMV growth has been modest, and its market share is smaller, but 2024 marked its first full-year of profitability. The CEO has repositioned the brand to focus on high-quality assortments, AI-driven logistics, and premium sellers, moving away from direct competition with Shopee in the value segment. As a result, Lazada is carving a niche in higher-end goods, while Shopee dominates low-cost C2C and SME sectors.

Other Players

The rest of the field is fragmented. Local champions like Bukalapak, Blibli, and Tiki hold share in home markets, but none present a regional threat. Western players like Amazon remain marginal outside Singapore. In total, Shopee, TikTok, and Lazada account for over 80% of Southeast Asia’s platform GMV.

Shopee’s rivals are investing to stay relevant. TikTok is the wild card, if it can turn its social audience into regular shoppers, it may narrow the gap. But for now, Shopee’s lead in scale and profitability remains firm. Of the $14 billion GMV added in 2024 across the region, Shopee accounted for $12 billion.

A Long Runway of Growth

Despite slower growth in 2024, the Southeast Asia e‑commerce opportunity is far from saturated. Penetration was just 12.8% of retail in 2024, leaving billions in offline spending up for grabs. Momentum forecasts that AI and data tools could unlock an additional $130 billion in GMV by 2030, improving search, logistics, and personalisation.

Live-streaming and video shopping already account for 20% of platform GMV and are still growing. Rising incomes and internet access, especially in Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, continue to add new shoppers.

Brands accounted for less than 30% of Southeast Asia’s platform e-commerce GMV, compared to over 50% in China, underscoring the untapped potential for brand-driven growth. Chinese consumer brands, learning from past missteps, are re-entering the region with improved products and localised strategies, gaining traction across key categories.

For Sea Limited, the challenge is converting this momentum into sustained profitability. Management is targeting ~20% GMV growth in 2025 with better margins, and Q1 2025 results (+21.5% YoY) suggest solid demand. Meanwhile, its SeaMoney and digital entertainment arms offer both cushioning and cross-sell potential.

Still, competition is fierce. Shopee must fend off TikTok’s social allure and Lazada’s premium positioning, all while carefully managing costs. But so far, Shopee’s ecosystem, data, and ingrained habits have proven resilient.

The Bottom Line

Shopee entered 2025 as Southeast Asia’s #1 e‑commerce platform by volume, with a widening lead. It has achieved this through a combination of scale, infrastructure investment, and smarter monetization. With total GMV still rising and digital penetration far from mature, Shopee appears well-positioned for profitable growth.

Importantly, Sea Limited is no longer burning cash to gain share. Instead, it is transforming Shopee into a high-volume, margin-expanding platform, a promising trajectory for long-term shareholders.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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How big could Ubers advertising business get, and what would it mean for Uber’s financials?

Uber’s Ad Empire

Ride Offers plugs into Uber’s Journey Ads suite (launched in 2022), which already runs video and display ads inside the Uber and Uber Eats apps. By dangling tangible value (ride discounts) in ads, Uber aims to boost engagement and attention. According to Uber, 65% of riders say discount ads stand out and make them feel more positive toward the sponsoring brand. Uber’s global head of sales touts Ride Offers as “more than just a discount, it’s a gesture that builds trust, loyalty, and lasting brand impact.”

Brands like Molson Coors have already tested Ride Offers and report double- or triple-digit lifts in click-throughs and video views compared to static ads. In short, Ride Offers is a coupon-driven ad format designed to deepen Uber’s growing advertising ecosystem.

Since formally launching its advertising division in late 2022, Uber has marketed itself as a platform to reach riders and eaters at high-value moments (on the way home, on break, etc.). That push is working: Uber’s ad business surpassed a $1.5 billion annual run rate as of Q1 2025, up 60% year-over-year.

Today, Uber serves ads in-app, in rider emails, on car-top displays, and in-car tablets. It has also launched a creative studio for custom campaigns (e.g. Uber-branded cars at an F1 race), and is experimenting with off-platform targeting using its unique location and transaction data. In short, Uber is acting like a full-fledged ad network, leveraging first-party data to sell access to attention.

Advertising adds high-margin revenue on top of Uber’s core ride and delivery business. Already, Uber Eats sees meaningful contributions from ads, with Uber a potential “sleeping giant” in advertising thanks to its scale.

The Numbers: Uber vs. Amazon and Booking

To assess Uber’s ad potential, compare it to other platforms whose core business isn’t advertising:

• Amazon, primarily a retailer, earned about $56.2 billion in ad revenue in 2024, roughly 9% of its $638 billion in sales.

• Booking Holdings, a travel marketplace, generated around $1.1 billion from "advertising and other" revenue in 2024.

Uber, with a ~$1.5 billion ad run rate, is just getting started. Today, Uber’s ad revenue is less than 1% of Gross Bookings. If Uber doubled that penetration, it would still trail Amazon but would surpass Booking.

Using business model comparisons:

• Amazon’s $530 billion in net sales (ex-AWS) and an assumed 15% take rate implies ~$3.5 trillion in gross bookings. Its ad revenue would be about 1.5% of gross bookings, and rising fast.

• If Uber’s ad unit reaches just 2% of gross bookings, and assuming Uber’s bookings grow from $166 billion in 2024 to $318 billion by 2030, its ad revenue could reach ~$6 billion by 2030.

• Booking, by contrast, has ad revenue of just ~0.6% of gross bookings.

Uber has more runway than Booking but a long way to go before matching Amazon’s scale.

Impact on Take Rate and Margins

Advertising would show up in Uber’s financials as a higher take rate and better margins. In 2024, Uber’s take rate was 27%, meaning it kept $27 of every $100 booked, after paying drivers and restaurants. Because ads aren’t tied to rides, every ad dollar directly lifts the take rate.

More importantly, ad dollars are far more profitable. Uber’s operating margin (EBIT) was just 6% in 2024, as scale efficiencies began to kick in. If we assume a 50% EBIT margin for ads, then $0.50 of every $1 in ad revenue drops to the bottom line.

Let’s play out two 2030 scenarios:

• $4.5 billion in ad revenue (1.5% of Gross Bookings)

• $6 billion in ad revenue (2% of Gross Bookings)

In either case, Uber’s take rate and operating margin rise significantly, without factoring in the natural operating leverage that comes from scaling the rest of the business.

The Bottom Line

Ride Offers signals Uber’s evolution from a pure transportation company to a data-driven media platform. In a saturated ad market, Uber’s wildcard is context: it knows where you’re going and when, data that allows for more relevant, better-timed ads than nearly any other platform.

And the results are impressive:

• 6.6x more attentive seconds than online video, social in-feed, or mobile display

• 50% ad recall after just 2.5 seconds of exposure

• 27% average lift in brand consideration post-exposure

Ride Offers is a strategic wedge into the $1 trillion global ad market. If Uber succeeds, it won’t just be a better transport company, it will be a more profitable one too.

Zooming out further, over the next decade, Uber could build a $10 billion run-rate, high-margin advertising business. For perspective, Uber’s total revenue was $11 billion as recently as 2018.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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The move is a direct response to intensifying competition from Asian players. Brazil accounts for over half of MELI’s revenue, and rivals like Shopee and Temu have been rapidly gaining share. MELI’s Brazil chief, Fernando Yunes, put it bluntly: the investment in logistics and subsidies is to “be ready for a war… to keep growing in Brazil” against Shopee, Shein, Temu, and others. By offering zero shipping on virtually the entire site (R$19 covers nearly all purchases), MELI is fighting to defend its e-commerce turf.

MELI’s stock fell 8% in the week following the announcement. Do investors have reason to worry, or has Wall Street misread the move?

Volume and Revenue: Bigger Sales, Smaller Tickets

Wall Street expects this aggressive pricing to boost gross merchandise volume (GMV), even if it puts pressure on per-item economics. Banco Itaú BBA notes that the R$19–79 range already accounts for ~19% of MELI Brazil’s GMV and 53% of items sold. In other words, a large slice of MELI’s order book now gets subsidised delivery.

Morgan Stanley agrees, noting that the policy should directly accelerate GMV growth by leveraging MELI’s dominant logistics network. This could drive more frequent purchases and attract new, price-sensitive buyers. Q1 2025 results already showed Brazil GMV up ~30% year-over-year, and the new policy aims to maintain that momentum.

Meanwhile, MELI continues to diversify revenue. 90% of Brazilian sales come from third-party sellers, with income from commissions, logistics, advertising, and fintech services. Notably, logistics revenue is just ~8% of Brazil GMV, so the subsidised shipping has a relatively modest revenue impact. This is more a reallocation of delivery costs than a broad revenue hit, even as order volume climbs.

Margins and Profits: Short-Term Squeeze

The trade-off is profitability. Itaú BBA estimates the new shipping policy could reduce annual pre-tax profit by ~$390 million, or ~10% of full-year 2025 EBIT. Citi Research also warns of a 2 percentage point decline in Brazil’s gross margin. Jefferies and others have downgraded MELI, citing this near-term margin compression.

MELI management emphasises that the R$19 threshold applies only to the slowest delivery tier, deliberately preserving express shipping fees. Itaú notes that this tiered approach allows MELI to expand free delivery without compromising its logistics business, which accounts for only a small share of GMV. Still, the immediate impact is a clear hit to margins, explaining the market’s initial alarm.

Wall Street’s Short-Term Focus vs. Long-Term Strategy

Many analysts are focused on short-term profit impacts. But as noted previously in this newsletter, Wall Street often prioritises near-term metrics, while MELI has consistently played the long game. Throughout its 25-year history, MELI’s upfront investments in logistics, credit, and tech have ultimately translated into long-term gains.

Some analysts echo this view. Exame notes that MELI expects to recover the cost via volume growth, higher order frequency, and network efficiency. Buyers from underserved regions (especially North and Northeast Brazil) who were previously deterred by shipping costs may now become regular users.

An expanding GMV base improves logistics efficiency (lower cost per order) and supports monetisation through more advertising and fintech services. MELI is also introducing new layers such as Mercado Ads, Mercado Play, loyalty programs, and financial products, to offset lower margins in core commerce.

Competition and Moat: Shopee, Amazon, Temu and Friends

Shopee holds ~8% of Brazil’s e-commerce market versus MELI’s ~13%, but it’s growing fast. Shopee’s Brazil GMV hit ~$10 billion last year, about 40% of MELI’s total, with $6 billion added in a single year. Shopee’s ultra-low-price model (average ticket ~$7 vs. MELI’s ~$21) is dominating the bargain segment. Temu, Shein, and quick-commerce players like Rappi are also gaining ground, especially in urban markets.

By lowering the free-shipping threshold, MELI is targeting these rivals’ strongholds. As Itaú analysts put it, MELI is using its scale to block the advance of new entrants at lower price tiers. Most of MELI’s sales are still higher-value, higher-margin goods, so the impact is contained to the bottom end of the catalogue.

Even Shopee now reports profitability in Brazil, as its volume scale dilutes fixed costs. That adds pressure. In response, MELI is leveraging its own assets: 25+ planned in 2025 and an integrated payments and ads ecosystem. If successful, the strategy deepens MELI’s moat, built on logistics, product breadth, and cross-selling to MercadoPago users.

The new policy reinforces MELI’s dominance by deploying its greatest competitive advantage, scale, in a way that competitors cannot easily replicate.

The Bottom Line

This is a classic case of short-term pain for long-term gain. MELI is sacrificing some margin today to secure growth and loyalty tomorrow. Analysts’ early reactions are understandable, but they miss the strategic context.

If the plan works, MELI will emerge with higher GMV, stickier customers, and a stronger competitive moat. The R$19 blitz could ultimately expand MELI’s revenue base, entrench its leadership over Shopee and Temu at the low end, and set up faster growth and better margins down the line.

That’s the kind of investment story long-term investors should focus on.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Original Investment Thesis

Before analyzing what went wrong, it’s important to revisit the original reasons for investing. My investment thesis for DocuSign centred on two key pillars:

1. Market Leadership

At the time, DocuSign was the clear market leader in the e-signature industry, commanding almost 80% of the market share.

The company boasted over 800,000 individual customers, including top-tier brands such as Netflix, Microsoft, and Apple. Operating as a SaaS platform, DocuSign achieved gross margins north of 75%, with revenue growth accelerating at 49% due to the pandemic-fueled shift to remote work.

2. Market Opportunity

The e-signature market was projected to grow to $25 billion, with DocuSign’s broader "Agreement Cloud" potentially doubling the addressable market to $50 billion. I saw e-signature as a Trojan horse, enabling DocuSign to onboard customers and upsell additional services in the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) market.

Signing contracts was just one small part of a much larger process, involving numerous pre- and post-signing activities. With digital transformation accelerating, demand for online, automated agreement processes was surging. Additionally, DocuSign’s leadership position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CLM reinforced my confidence in its ability to execute and innovate.

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Moat Analysis

With the investment thesis established, let’s examine why it ultimately failed. The primary issue was a lack of a durable competitive advantage—or "moat." DocuSign’s business fell short in four key areas: switching costs, network effects, intangible assets, and cost advantages.

1. Switching Costs

DocuSign’s user-friendly platform made it easy to adopt, but also easy to leave. Customers could switch to competitors like Adobe Sign, signNow, or Dropbox without incurring significant financial or operational disruption. This lack of substantial switching costs undermined customer loyalty and left DocuSign vulnerable to competitors.

2. Network Effects

Although DocuSign had a large user base, its platform didn’t benefit from network effects in the same way social media platforms or marketplaces do. The value of using DocuSign didn’t increase with more users; it depended primarily on the service’s reliability and features. Competitors could easily replicate its functionality without needing to build a massive network, limiting DocuSign’s edge.

3. Intangible Assets

DocuSign’s strong brand reputation for security and ease of use was a competitive advantage, but not a unique or defensible one. Many competitors built comparable reputations, offering similar levels of security and functionality. This diluted the impact of DocuSign’s brand strength.

4. Cost Advantages

While DocuSign’s subscription-based model delivered consistent revenue, the company lacked meaningful cost advantages. The e-signature market is highly competitive, with multiple players offering similar services at comparable prices. Established competitors like Adobe could leverage their existing distribution networks to bundle services and undercut DocuSign’s standalone pricing.

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Investment Outcome

Despite being a leader in the e-signature market and experiencing pandemic-driven demand, DocuSign lacked the competitive advantages necessary to sustain long-term success. I failed to appreciate the vulnerabilities in its business model. As competition intensified, revenue growth plummeted from 49% to less than 8% in the past year as e-signature market share declined.

In 2021, the market priced DocuSign for hyper-growth. Wall Street analysts projected FY25 revenue of $3.88 billion, but the company is now on track to generate just $2.96 billion—a 31% shortfall. This gap led to significant multiple compression: DocuSign’s Price-to-Sales ratio fell from a lofty 25x in 2021 to far more modest levels.

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Conclusion: Lessons Learned

Reflecting on this investment, here are the key takeaways:

1. Focus on Future Potential, Not Current Performance

Where a company is headed matters more than where it stands today. The stock market is forward-looking, and evidence of a durable moat provides confidence in a company’s future prospects. Great current results don’t guarantee sustained success.

2. Always Consider Valuation and Margin of Safety

Valuation is critical. Even if your thesis plays out as expected, overpaying for a stock can erode returns. In this case, the entry point offered no margin of safety; the stock was priced to perfection and punished severely when expectations weren’t met.

3. Practice Position Sizing

One thing I got right was position sizing. I limited DocuSign to 3% of my portfolio, ensuring the broader portfolio was insulated from a major drawdown. Even the best investors make mistakes, but proper position sizing can mitigate the damage when they do.

Investing is a continuous learning process. This experience reinforced the importance of rigorous due diligence, thoughtful valuation, and disciplined risk management. I hope these lessons help you avoid similar pitfalls in your investing journey.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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What is Technological Leapfrogging?

Technological leapfrogging is a phenomenon where markets skip intermediate stages of technological development and jump straight to advanced solutions. It often occurs in emerging markets or outdated industries, bypassing legacy systems that would otherwise slow progress.

Think of it like skipping DVDs and going straight from VHS to streaming services.

Here are two examples of technological leapfrogging in Latin America:

• Computing: Bypassing desktop computer adoption to embrace mobile phones as the primary computing platform.

• Payments: Adopting mobile payments directly, skipping the widespread use of credit and debit cards.

Though technological leapfrogging is rare, it creates seismic shifts when it happens.

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Conditions for Technological Leapfrogging to Occur

Why is the U.S. still swiping credit cards while Latin America has leapfrogged into faster, borderless payment systems? The answer lies in legacy infrastructure. Countries like the U.S. built robust payment networks from the 1950s to the 1980s, making it nearly impossible to replace them due to high switching costs. By contrast, Latin America’s underdeveloped infrastructure allowed it to embrace modern solutions from the start.

Here are the three key conditions required for leapfrogging to occur:

1. Non-Transactors to Transactors

This condition involves turning people who’ve never used a service into enthusiastic adopters of new technology.

Characteristics:

• Large untapped market of potential users

• No entrenched habits or legacy systems

• Openness to new technologies

In Latin America, a significant portion of the population was unbanked before mobile banking arrived. This allowed companies like Nubank to bypass traditional banking and offer financial services directly through smartphones.

2. Low Switching Costs

With minimal legacy infrastructure, users can adopt new technologies without financial or logistical hurdles.

Factors driving low switching costs:

• Limited existing infrastructure

• Absence of sunk costs in outdated systems

• Flexible regulatory environment

Latin America’s limited landline infrastructure, for example, made it easy to transition directly to mobile networks, bypassing traditional telephone infrastructure.

3. Compelling Value Proposition

New technologies must offer clear benefits that solve real problems in the target market.

Elements of a strong value proposition:

• Solves critical inefficiencies

• Offers tangible improvements over old systems

• Aligns with local needs and preferences

Mobile payments in Latin America exemplify this. They provide accessible, convenient financial services to populations excluded by traditional banks, driving mass adoption.

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Nubank Case Study

Nubank identified the inefficiencies of Brazil’s banking system and took a bold mobile-first approach. This allowed it to capitalize on smartphone adoption and sidestep the complexities of traditional banking.

Non-Transactors to Transactors

In 2014, when Nubank launched, only 68% of Brazilian adults had a bank account. By 2024, 90% do—largely thanks to Nubank’s influence. Today, 95 million Brazilians, or 56% of the adult population, have a Nubank account. The company successfully tapped into a vast unbanked population, particularly among younger demographics.

Low Switching Costs

Brazil’s traditional banks were known for long queues, high fees, and cumbersome processes. When Nubank’s CEO David Vélez moved from Colombia to Brazil in 2008, it took him five months just to open a bank account. This frustration inspired him to create Nubank.

Without entrenched infrastructure to block innovation, Nubank’s mobile-first strategy quickly gained traction. Setting up an account became fast, free, and online—no branches, no fees, and no red tape.

Compelling Value Proposition

Nubank revolutionized banking by offering essential services through a digital-only model. With no need for physical branches, Nubank can deliver services at a cost of just $0.90 per customer.

The company's focus on customer experience and financial inclusion was a game-changer. For many users who had never accessed banking services, Nubank became the first bank they could carry in their pocket. Customers gained access to accounts, credit cards, and investments—all through an intuitive smartphone app.

Learn more about Nubank in our deep dive.

Mercado Libre Case Study

Mercado Libre leveraged mobile computing and digital payments to create a comprehensive ecosystem that transformed retail and finance in the region.

Non-Transactors to Transactors

Founded in 1999, Mercado Libre drew inspiration from eBay. But unlike eBay, Mercado Libre faced a major hurdle: Latin America was still a cash-dominated economy with limited payment infrastructure.

In response, Mercado Libre launched Mercado Pago in 2003 to provide digital payment solutions. This not only enhanced transactions on its marketplace but also met the needs of an unbanked population. Fast forward to 2024 and Mercado Pago serves 52 million monthly active users, while the marketplace boasts 56 million active buyers per quarter.

Low Switching Costs

Mercado Libre foresaw the shift toward mobile computing and began overhauling its technical infrastructure in 2009. As consumers in Latin America adopted mobile devices, the company’s early investment in mobile technology gave it a significant advantage.

Its mobile-first strategy made it easy for new users to navigate the platform, while the seamless integration of e-commerce and financial services lowered barriers to entry for small businesses. With data from both its marketplace and fintech platforms, Mercado Libre offers personalized experiences that keep users engaged.

Compelling Value Proposition

Mercado Libre’s ecosystem combines e-commerce, digital payments, and financial services into a one-stop solution. This comprehensive approach gave it an edge over competitors like Amazon, which struggled to succeed in Latin America without addressing the region’s payments gap.

By lowering barriers to entry, Mercado Libre empowered small businesses to access financial tools and expand their reach. Its ability to tailor services to local needs—while operating with in-house technology—has made it the dominant digital platform in Latin America.

Learn more about Mercado Libre in our deep dive.

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Conclusion

Nubank and Mercado Libre show how technological leapfrogging can transform emerging markets. By offering mobile-first, user-friendly solutions that address significant market gaps, these companies have reshaped Latin America’s financial and e-commerce landscapes.

Their success highlights the potential for digital solutions to unlock financial inclusion and create new paradigms in business and technology. As their journeys continue, Nubank and Mercado Libre stand as shining examples of how emerging markets can become global leaders in innovation with the right strategy.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

I'm thrilled by this response because I believe it will add a lot of additional value for everyone. The Substack App emerged as the preferred platform by a wide margin, so I’m excited to announce the launch of The Wolf of Harcourt Street Community Chat.

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Over the years, I’ve realized that some of the most valuable insights come not just from individual analysis, but from the collective wisdom of shared ideas. The aim of this community is to foster an environment where knowledge is shared, strategies are discussed, and we all grow together.

What’s Changing?

Nothing about the existing structure or cadence of the newsletter is changing. This community chat is designed to supplement the weekly newsletter and provide additional benefits to subscribers, including real-time discussions, peer-to-peer learning, networking opportunities, and the ability to influence future content.

How to Get Started

1. Download the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent via email, so turn on push notifications to stay up-to-date with conversations as they happen. You can also access chat on the web.

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2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for The Wolf of Harcourt Street chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into the thread to say hi or lurk quietly. If you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ or reach out to me directly.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

Although it’s tempting to always default to financial KPIs, the best North Star Metrics help businesses understand how customers truly derive value from their products. This focus on customer value is crucial for sustainable growth and helps investors gauge the company's market fit and potential for expansion. While revenue itself shouldn't be the North Star Metric, a properly chosen metric should lead to revenue growth. This connection to financial performance is essential for investors evaluating the company's potential returns.

Let's examine some North Star Metrics for a selection of stocks I follow closely as case studies. Grouping these stocks by sector reveals clear themes.

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Marketplace

MercadoLibre

⭐ Gross Merchandise Volume

Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) represents the total value of all transactions completed through MercadoLibre's marketplace, offering a clear view of its core e-commerce business performance. An increase in GMV typically correlates with higher revenue through marketplace fees, shipping fees, and other ancillary services. By focusing on GMV as a North Star Metric, investors can gauge MercadoLibre's overall growth, market penetration, and the success of its e-commerce platform in Latin America.

Sea Limited

⭐ Gross Merchandise Volume

GMV also serves as a North Star Metric for Sea Limited, measuring the total value of transactions on Sea's e-commerce platform, Shopee. This metric reflects the health and growth of its core e-commerce business. GMV growth indicates Sea Limited's increasing market share in the competitive Southeast Asian e-commerce landscape and suggests a thriving ecosystem of buyers and sellers on Shopee. Focusing on GMV encourages initiatives to increase transaction volume, improve user experience, and expand product selection—key strategic priorities for Sea Limited.

Airbnb

⭐Nights and Experiences Booked

Nights and Experiences Booked measures the primary activity on Airbnb's platform and acts as a robust predictor of future demand. As this metric increases, it typically correlates with higher revenue through service fees and other charges. It demonstrates user engagement and the success of Airbnb in connecting hosts and guests, creating a flywheel effect where more bookings lead to more satisfied customers, attracting more hosts and guests in turn.

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Fintech

Adyen

⭐ Processed Volume

Processed Volume measures the total value of transactions Adyen processes, reflecting the health and growth of its core payment processing business. As Processed Volume increases, it typically correlates with higher revenue through transaction fees and other services. This growth can indicate Adyen's increasing market share in the competitive global payments industry and suggests growing adoption of its payment solutions by merchants and consumers. Over 80% of Adyen’s Processed Volume growth comes from expanding existing customer relationships on the platform.

Nubank

⭐ Number of Customers

The number of customers reflects Nubank's ability to attract and retain users, crucial for its growth and market penetration. As the number of customers increases, so does Nubank's revenue potential through transaction fees and interest income. This growth indicates Nubank's increasing market share in the competitive fintech and banking sectors in Latin America and suggests that its financial products meet customer needs. The number of customers is more important than Purchase Volume for Nubank because it disrupts incumbent banks. Without market penetration, there is no monetisation down the line.

PayPal

⭐ Total Payment Volume

Total Payment Volume (TPV) measures the total dollar value of transactions conducted through PayPal's payments platform. As TPV increases, it typically correlates with higher revenue through transaction fees and other services. TPV allows investors to compare PayPal's performance with other payment processors and assess its competitive standing in the market. Recently, PayPal’s management shifted its focus to active customer accounts and payment transactions per active account. Increasing both active accounts and transactions per account can lead to growth in TPV.

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Social Network

Meta

⭐ Family daily active people

Family daily active people refers to the number of unique individuals who use at least one of Meta's family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) daily. This metric measures user engagement across Meta's ecosystem. As a social media company, Meta's success relies heavily on active user engagement. Higher daily active users correlate with increased advertising revenue, Meta's primary source of income.

B2B

Datadog

⭐ $100K+ ARR Customers

The number of customers with Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $100,000 or more demonstrates Datadog's ability to attract and retain high-value customers. An increase in $100K+ ARR customers suggests successful upselling and cross-selling of Datadog's products to existing customers and increasing adoption among larger enterprises and organizations with complex needs. Customers with higher ARR are likely to be more stable, contributing to Datadog's overall business stability.

Evolution

⭐ Number of Live Tables

As Evolution provides live casino solutions to online gambling operators, the number of live tables deployed directly impacts earnings potential. More tables mean more capacity to serve players and generate revenue through setup fees, commission fees, and dedicated table fees. An increase in deployed tables indicates that more online casinos are adopting Evolution's solutions, demonstrating market growth. A complementary metric, such as Revenue per Table, showcases the company's operational efficiency and scalability.

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Key Takeaways

1. North Star Metrics should focus on customer value rather than just financial metrics.

   Metrics like GMV for MercadoLibre and Sea Limited and Nights and Experiences Booked for Airbnb measure the success of the core business in delivering value to customers.

2. North Star Metrics should lead to revenue growth, even if revenue itself is not the metric.

   Processed Volume for Adyen, Total Payment Volume for PayPal, and Family daily active people for Meta all correlate with revenue growth as the business scales.

3. North Star Metrics should be measurable, time-bound, and within the company's control.

   The Number of Live Tables for Evolution is a clear, actionable metric that demonstrates the company's market growth.

4. North Star Metrics can vary by business model and stage.

   For a fintech like Nubank disrupting retail banking, the Number of Customers is more important than transaction volume. For a B2B company like Datadog, the number of high-value enterprise customers is key.

5. North Star Metrics should be broken down into sub-metrics to drive alignment and ownership.

   Initiatives to increase transactions, improve user experience, and expand selection all feed into GMV growth for e-commerce companies.

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Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

Deciding when to sell a stock is challenging, and investors often stop tracking stocks after selling them, missing opportunities to learn and improve. Implementing a feedback loop by reviewing the outcomes of sell decisions is crucial. This practice helps determine the quality of decisions, learn from them, and avoid repeating mistakes, ultimately leading to better decision-making in the future.

Today’s edition will analyze the sell decisions from 2022. The analysis of the sell decisions from 2021 is linked below.

iRobot (Ticker: IRBT)

I sold IRBT in May 2022. Since then, the stock has returned -78% compared to the broader market return of +39%.

Rationale

The decision to IRBT was based on initial rumours that it was due to be acquired by Amazon. Given that I already owned Amazon, I felt it was wiser to sell the position and redeploy the proceeds rather than wait until the all-cash transaction went through.

Current Reflection

Ironically, the acquisition did not end up going through due to EU antitrust concerns. In January 2024, Amazon agreed to terminate the pending acquisition, and the IRBT share price has fallen off a cliff. In 2023, IRBT’s revenue declined by 25%, which forced the company to lay off 31% of its employees.

Given the deteriorating fundamentals of IRBT and the very real possibility of bankruptcy, the decision to sell proved to be a good one. However, I was somewhat fortunate, as my decision to sell was based on acquisition rumors. The “buy the rumour, sell the news” strategy—or in this case, sell the rumour—proved profitable.

Enthusiast Gaming (Ticker: EGLX)

I sold EGLX in May 2022. Since then, the stock has returned -93% compared to the broader market return of +39%.

Rationale

I was initially attracted to the stock as a way to gain exposure to the esports industry. The company grew rapidly in 2020 and 2021, posting triple-digit revenue growth. This position started as a small speculative investment, but unfortunately, as I began to dig deeper, a number of red flags emerged, including a clear lack of a durable competitive advantage and a questionable CEO. I decided to get out while I still could.

Current Reflection

EGLX turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. In June 2022, four vice president-level executives authored a letter to EGLX’s board of directors, requesting that the board ask CEO Adrian Montgomery to resign. In the letter, the group cited failures around strategic planning and equity distribution, as well as issues relating to staffing the company’s human resources department. Montgomery was eventually replaced by Nick Brien in March 2023, but he lasted less than a year and resigned in January 2024.

EGLX as a business has deteriorated severely since I sold my position. In 2023, revenue declined by 12%, and in Q1 2024, it declined by 46%. To compound matters, shareholders have been massively diluted with an extra 16% of shares issued since May 2022. The decision to sell, from a fundamental perspective, proved to be the correct move.

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Peloton (Ticker: PTON)

I sold PTON in May 2022. Since then, the stock has returned -77% compared to the broader market return of +39%.

Rationale

I finally sold my PTON position after one too many red flags. Let’s remind ourselves by listing them out:

1. May 2021: Treadmill recall handled badly by management after a number of injuries and a child’s death.

2. August 2021: Bike price was lowered despite this being marketed as a premium product - would this ever happen with an iPhone?

3. November 2021: After stating on the earnings call that a capital raise will not be required, Peloton raised capital (diluting shareholders) less than two weeks later.

4. January 2022: Hired Morgan McKinsey to review cost structure and suspends production of all connected fitness products.

5. May 2022: CEO John Foley announces plans to step down as part of a major restructuring that would reduce its workforce by 15%.

Current Reflection

Following the appointment of Barry McCarthy as CEO, things went from bad to worse. The company ended up eroding its brand by heavily discounting its products on Amazon and faced a further recall of over 2 million bikes due to faulty seats. After announcing intentions to sell Precor, the equipment manufacturer it acquired in 2020, PTON announced in 2023 that it was struggling to offload the company.

In May 2024, PTON announced that Barry McCarthy was stepping down along with a 15% workforce layoff. It is ironic that McCarthy was hired to turn the ship around, yet he ended up crashing it into an even larger iceberg. During McCarthy's time in charge, the stock returned -89%.

PTON serves as an important lesson in establishing the difference between a secular trend and a fad. The latter can lead to costly mistakes. As investors, we need to park emotions and instead act based on cold hard facts. While the decision to sell was entirely the correct one from a fundamental perspective, it should have been made a lot sooner given the series of red flags.

Roku (Ticker: ROKU)

I sold ROKU in July 2022. Since then, the stock has retuned -14% compared to the broader market return of +34%.

Rationale

I decided to sell ROKU when it became apparent that the business was cyclical in nature, which was not part of my initial investment thesis. This realization came to me in 2022 when there was a significant slowdown in TV advertising spend due to the macroeconomic environment. I had expected the streaming platform to be far more resilient than it turned out to be. Discovering that there had been an error of judgment in my initial investment thesis was a clear reason for me to sell.

Current Reflection

The cyclicality manifested itself in a big way in 2022, as revenue growth dropped to 13%, following over 55% growth in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, revenue growth fell further to 11%. In contrast, the digital advertising platform, The Trade Desk, continued to grow revenue by 32% and 23% in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Based on the market sell-off in 2022, it could be argued that I was not the only one who didn’t expect the ROKU business model to be cyclical in nature. While the ROKU business has not deteriorated, given that it is growing the top line by double digits, it has slowed down considerably, especially compared to market expectations in 2022. Ultimately, the rationale behind selling proved accurate and is enough of a reason to remain on the sidelines with this one.

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Concluding Remarks

If we look purely at the price action, my rationale for selling has proven to be accurate. Holding onto any of the positions would have resulted in market under-performance. In fact, holding onto IRBT, EGLX, or PTON would have resulted in capital incineration. At the time, I was already selling these positions at a loss, but it is hard to believe how much worse things could have been. I was right to sell, but I was also wrong to buy in the first place.

Looking purely at the price action does not really indicate if my decision-making was based on sound logic. However, looking at the underlying business fundamentals does. In the case of IRBT, EGLX, and PTON, all three have deteriorated massively and are much worse businesses today than they were in 2022. Only ROKU continues to grow, albeit at a much slower pace than anticipated. This also serves as a reminder that stock prices can be volatile in the short term but tend to follow underlying earnings growth in the long term.

Another key takeaway for me is that improving the buy decision process would have resulted in some of the sell decisions never having to be made in the first place. My approach to stock selection is a lot more robust and disciplined today than it was a number of years ago. This can be observed in the depth and detail of any of the recent investment theses that I have shared.

Looking at all of the stocks that I sold in 2021 (6) and 2022 (4), none of them have had positive returns, let alone beat the market, apart from Walmart (WMT). The concept of "never sell" is often bandied about, but sometimes you need to recognize when fundamentals are deteriorating or admit you were wrong, learn from it, and move on.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

I hope you are having a nice weekend. On Friday, I was kindly invited to appear on the Dividend Talk podcast to discuss Evolution AB. While I see myself more as a writer than a speaker, it was a great opportunity for me to share my thoughts on Evolution. I have provided links below to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for those interested in listening to the show.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

I welcome your feedback regarding the podcast appearance. Is this a format you would like to hear more of, or do you prefer the written format? Please feel free to leave a comment below, or simply reply to this email with your thoughts.

Thank you.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

The past week was a slow news week for the stocks that I follow closely but I have been consuming a lot of excellent podcasts recently. With that in mind, I would like to highlight some material that will provide you with a valuable return on the time you invest in listening.

Ali Gündüz Unlocking Evolution - Longriver Podcast

When it comes to Evolution, Ali Gündüz is one of the brightest minds who follows the company closely. I have discussed Evolution with Ali as part of my own research into the company, but I believe this might be his first public podcast appearance. This material is worth your time because it focuses on the challenges that Evolution faces, including increasing competition, its dependence on Asian markets to sustain its growth, the slow roll-out of game shows in the US, its difficulties in RNG, and its need for a more consistent capital allocation policy.

The State of the Luxury Industry - Chit Chat Money

Sleepwell Capital and Leandro from Best Anchor Stocks join host Brett to provide an extremely comprehensive overview of the luxury industry. They discuss everything from what constitutes a luxury company to what sets Hermes, Rolex, and Ferrari apart from the rest. What I found particularly insightful was the differentiation made between true luxury and premium products. I have a couple of luxury stocks on my watchlist, and this primer has provided an excellent resource to complement my own research process.

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A Conversation with Charlie Munger & John Collison - Invest Like the Best

It is very rare to hear new material from a person who has passed away. However, this conversation between Charlie Munger and John Collison was actually recorded before Charlie's sad passing. This provides one final opportunity to learn from one of the greatest investors of all time. Don’t miss out on it.

The 10 Most Important Financial Skills - The Morgan Housel Podcast

Morgan Housel is one of my favourite authors. The Psychology of Money is one of the best books I have read, and I recently purchased his latest one, Same as Ever. What you might not know is that Morgan also has his own podcast. In this episode, Morgan discusses ten of the most important financial skills, ranging from realising that no one is as impressed with your possessions as you are, to accepting that living below your means requires suppressing your ego to a level below your income.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

Join the community of informed investors – subscribe now to receive the latest content straight to your inbox each week and never miss out on valuable investment insights.

Subscribe now

If you found today's edition helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues on social media or via email. Your support helps to continue to provide this newsletter for FREE!

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Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

It’s hard to believe that on the 7th November of this year, this newsletter will be three years old, and what a journey it has been!

From the humble beginnings of Ireland, we have grown into a global community with subscribers from 98 countries and counting.

The Foundation

The origins of this newsletter can be traced back to the creation of the Twitter account, @wolfofharcourt. It all began as an effort to connect and engage with fellow stock market enthusiasts. The attitude towards investing in Ireland is very different to that of the United States and very few in my social circle had an interest in the stock market at that time.

Following a few months on Twitter, during which my follower count reached a couple of hundred, I made the decision to start a newsletter on Substack. This choice was driven by the desire to share more extensive and in-depth ideas, given Twitter's character limit of 280 at the time.

Fast forward three years and thousands of you read the newsletter each week.

The Mission

While the newsletter audience continues to scale, it is immensely satisfying to know that 18% of the readers come from my home country. In Ireland, the prevailing sentiment towards stock investing often leans towards considering it a form of gambling, while property is typically perceived as the safest investment. From the very beginning, my goal has been to challenge this perception and offer a relatable voice to counter this belief.

While the fear of losing money is still the biggest barrier to investing for most people, the fear of inflation should be even greater. From the outset, my aim has been to debunk this myth. Equipping readers with the tools and resources to become self-reliant investors by sharing personal insights and opinions will consistently remain one of the primary objectives of this newsletter.

Quality over Quantity

2023 has proven to be the biggest year yet in terms of newsletter growth, with a 65% increase in subscribers since the beginning of the year. A key contributor to this growth has been a focus on content quality. Spending months, as opposed to weeks, on researching deep-dive subjects has resulted in more comprehensive and detailed material. In contrast to previous years, where the goal was to produce one deep-dive each month, 2023 has seen the publication of four such reports in nine months. This is soon to become five, make sure you are subscribed to receive the Evolution deep dive next week.

Subscribe now

The key lesson learned is the value of thoughtful and deliberate content. Rushing to meet self-imposed deadlines has been replaced by a commitment to delivering well-measured and thoroughly considered updates. This shift ensures that subscribers can expect content that is both insightful and well thought out.

The most popular posts in 2023 have been:

• Adyen N.V Investment Thesis - 9.5k views

• Datadog, Inc. Investment Thesis - 5.0k views

• MercadoLibre, Inc. Investment Thesis - 4.4k views

The Future

As the newsletter continues to evolve and I strive to provide you with the most valuable insights and information on the stock market, I recognize the importance of your feedback. Your opinions and preferences matter greatly to me, and that's why I’m excited to invite you to participate in a Subscriber Survey.

Complete Subscriber Survey

Your input will help me to understand your preferences, interests, and areas where you'd like improvement. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just getting started, your perspective is invaluable. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, and the survey will take only a few minutes of your time.

In exchange for some of your valuable time to complete the survey, I will continue to provide you with valuable insights. In fact, the data gathered from the survey should mean that you will be provided with more of the content you want to read. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

Complete Subscriber Survey

Thank you for being a part of the global community and for your support over the years. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions through the survey.

If you'd like to support the work of an independent analyst, you can buy me a coffee. The proceeds will contribute to covering the annual running costs of the newsletter.

Buy me a coffee

Join the community of informed investors – subscribe now to receive the latest content straight to your inbox each week and never miss out on valuable investment insights.

Subscribe now

If you found today's edition helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues on social media or via email. Your support helps to continue to provide this newsletter for FREE!

Share

Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com

Evolution AB (Ticker: EVO.ST, EVVTY) will be the focus of the next deep dive which will be released in October.

Today, I'm excited to have a special guest interview with Leandro, who you might know as @invesquotes on Twitter.

Back in 2020, when I joined the FinTwit community, Leandro was one of the very first folks I connected with. We hit it off right away because we both share a passion for stocks. We even teamed up to talk stocks in a Twitter Spaces event.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Hey Leandro, thanks for joining me today. Before we dive in, it'd be great if you could tell our readers a bit about yourself. Maybe share some background info, how you got interested in investing, and what you're up to these days.

Leandro

Thanks for having me on Wolf, and I appreciate what you shared at the beginning because I do remember that we got along quite well since day 1. I guess saying my name is not really necessary, haha. 

I’m 28 years old and was born and live in Spain. My passion for investing really started to show up when I was in my first year as a University student. I studied economics, and even though there were not a lot of investment-related courses, I occasionally came across one that made me interested, so I started reading about the topic. 

Before going to university, I was somewhat interested in owning a business, I still am to this day, but I never viewed myself pursuing a career related to the stock market. Of course, the negative connotation stock investing has in Spain played a role in my future ambitions…The stock market is not really a big thing here. It’s somewhat understandable, though. Spain went into the 2008 crisis with an index heavily exposed to real estate and banks, so it didn’t play out great, and it took much longer to recover than other markets. Lots of people lost a good chunk of their money and started viewing the stock market as extremely risky, which it obviously can be.

Anyway, I started writing about investing some years back and finally decided to make this my full-time job at Best Anchor Stocks. It has been fun but also a great learning experience. Having 8 hours to read, research, and write about companies really compounds over the long term, just like returns.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

The negative connotation to stock investing in Spain is something that resonates with me as an Irish investor. Individual stocks are viewed as speculative or risky causing property to be seen as the safest investment in this country. I feel like this is ingrained in European’s and manifests itself in the Stock Based Compensation (SBC) policies of European companies. Adyen, as an example, has much lower SBC than its U.S. peers. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Leandro

I mean I completely agree. People in Europe generally prefer to be paid in cash rather than stock for the reason you discussed above. I think this constitutes a competitive advantage for companies that have most costs in Europe but sell worldwide. I mean Adyen is a good example. The company has a single-code platform which is most likely developed in Amsterdam by probably much cheaper developers than those than U.S. companies have access to. 

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Could you explain how “Best Anchor Stocks” all came about?

Leandro

Yep, of course. I had been writing on my own for some time because I thought it really helped my learning curve become exponential. When you write down your thesis, you become aware of potential flaws during your research process, and it also helps you think better, if that makes sense. 

I also think that sharing it publicly is beneficial as you can get pushback or other viewpoints that help you improve or refine your process. Of course, there will always be two types of pushback. Those that are well-reasoned and where you can clearly tell that the other investor has done their work, and those that are simply people parroting some sort of valuation ratio or bear case with no context whatsoever. Most will be of the second kind, but getting only 5% of the first type is already extremely valuable, in my opinion.

Anyway, going back to the topic, Kris, the founder of Potential Multibaggers, asked me if I’d like to write some articles occasionally for his service, and I agreed. Long story short, that eventually evolved toward the launch of Best Anchor Stocks, which I now do full-time. Being able to work on your passion is not an opportunity many people have, and I thought this was a good opportunity for me. Obviously, it’s a risky move. I left the comfort of a full-time job at a consulting company where I was valued, but sometimes you just have to take the risk and see how it plays out.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

It is pretty amazing to see the opportunities like this that can arise simply from putting yourself out there and sharing your ideas publicly on a platform. Do you have any advice to offer for individuals who may aspire to pursue a similar journey the unconventional way?

Leandro

I’d say the most relevant advice I can give anyone is to only do it if they truly enjoy it. Writing can be horrible if one doesn’t enjoy both writing and the topic. I also think one should not force the switch, it will probably come natural. One year before starting Best Anchor Stocks I honestly didn’t think I’d work in what I do now, but that’s how life works, right? Totally unpredictable sometimes!

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Can you tell me about your investment philosophy and strategy as it pertains to “Best Anchor Stocks”? 

Leandro

Yep, so it’s pretty straightforward. At Best Anchor Stocks, I analyze companies and build a portfolio with my own money based on the findings of my research. Subscribers have access to this portfolio and all the research but are ultimately responsible for building their conviction. I have subscribers that have invested in only in 2 or 3 companies in my portfolio, others more. What’s important is that what you are investing behind is something you truly believe in, and that’s something impossible to build through direct recommendations. 

I think this is a very important topic and I know it’s tougher to sell a service where one does not get direct ideas to take action because many people want others to tell them what to do, but that’s how I view it.

I’d say my investment philosophy has shifted a fair bit over the years, but I don’t think I have followed an unusual path. At first, I tried to make money fast, failed, and then I started to appreciate the steady but safer compounding of capital. I’m 28 years old, and as you’d imagine, I am in no rush to build my capital, so I prefer to take a more measured approach. And that’s precisely what you can see at Best Anchor Stocks. 

The goal is to build a portfolio of high-quality companies with long runways ahead that are easy to hold. I am a firm believer that people tend to underappreciate that one of the most difficult tasks in investing is not finding a winner, but being able to hold it through a long period. One can make this task easier by owning strong companies and building conviction around them. Of course, conviction will be tested, and not all will prove to be winners, but that’s precisely where diversification comes into play.

I think a great starting point to make this task easy is to search for companies with strong moats and led by strong management teams. I know it sounds like a cliché, but there’s not much more to it. I also tend to favor industries that are not entirely cyclical but that might have some element of cyclicality that benefits the incumbents. That way, you’ll most likely get opportunities to add to your positions periodically.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

That is the beauty of investing, it is a continual learning process. For me, the personal development gained through the journey far outweighs the final destination. Recently you shared a post on Twitter showing the performance of “Best Anchor Stocks” which has outperformed major indexes since inception in January 2022. Without giving too much away, can you highlight one or two of your most successful portfolio picks and the factors that contributed to their success?

Leandro

The performance of the portfolio has been good, but it has obviously been a short period to judge performance. I mean, it has been a bit more than a year and a half, and honestly, in that timeframe, it’s difficult to separate luck from skill. There will probably always be a component of luck in investing, but it becomes less relevant over time, in my opinion. 

The companies with the best return in the portfolio are currently Adobe and Copart, both over 50% since I added them to my portfolio. I must say, though, that before Adobe’s huge run this year, I slightly trimmed my position as I built conviction in the company’s competitive position. This, of course, was precipitated by the Figma acquisition. I think it’s still early for me to make a judgement of how that will go considering that we don’t even know if the acquisition will close.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

I would tend to agree that there is always an element of luck in investing, especially in a bull market, but this fades over the long-run. In the age of information overload, there can be a lot of noise when it comes to investing. How do you stay updated on market trends and news relevant to your investment process? Can you describe your research process and sources of information?

Leandro

I actually have a pretty standard research process, nothing too crazy, but I am happy with it thus far. I can tell you that, as one would expect, it involves quite a bit of reading.

I always start reading the Annual Report of a company that I might potentially be interested in. I then continue with the Investor Day, if there is one, conference calls, earnings calls, expert calls…I think a great source and often underappreciated is regulatory documents. These only apply to companies that have done large M&A and have gone under antitrust scrutiny, but the EU has some great papers on many industries that help one get a grasp of the competitive environment. 

I also tend to conduct several expert calls myself. This source has gotten negative publicity lately, I don’t really know why, but I think they are pretty useful at two stages:

1. When you are starting your research on an industry and want an overview

2. When you have done all of your research and have very specific questions

I find they might not be as useful when you are in the middle of those two. I also look at the history of the company because I think it can tell investors more about the future than they might think. 

So yeah, that’s pretty much it. I do this for every company, and when researching an industry specifically, I do this for the main players in the industry. Always interesting to get different viewpoints.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

One of the challenges investment researchers face is finding the right balance between consuming content, such as reading, and generating content, like writing. How do you manage this delicate balance? Naturally, you have the opportunity to do this full-time, but I'd be curious to hear how you personally manage this.

Leandro

It’s a great question with no easy answer to be honest. It depends on the week. Sometimes during earnings season I will not have a lot of time to read about other companies in the watchlist, but I tend to reserve 3 or 4 hours a day to reading new things regardless of how much writing I have to do. I think it’s extremely complicated to balance both, but I would say one should never force things. For example, if I start writing an article but I am not feeling it, I’ll read about something, but I will not force myself to write it. Quality gets compromised when one forces himself.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Position sizing and risk management is a huge component of investing. I personally feel it is often one of the most overlooked aspects. How do you handle position sizing and risk management in your investment process? 

Leandro

I admire investors that can be extremely concentrated, but personally, I don’t think that’s something for me. I see myself owning somewhere between 15 and 20 companies because that’s a number where, one, I feel I am sufficiently diversified and, two, I can follow to the standards I think that investments should be followed. I would also note here that diversification is not entirely reduced by increasing the number of companies as one can be extremely exposed to a particular industry or trend even if they hold 30 companies. On the contrary, one can be quite diversified by holding just one company. Atlas Copco is pretty diversified, for example.

I size my portfolio based on conviction if the valuation is in a good spot. So, for example, if I have very high conviction in company “x” but I can’t get too comfortable adding at current prices, then it’ll have to wait. On the contrary, if I have less conviction on company “y” but the valuation is very appealing, then it might make up a larger portion of the portfolio at some point.

This comes from the fact that I add periodically to my investments, so my portfolio is not static. On an end state, I would like to see my portfolio being weighed by conviction, and that’s the goal, but with periodic adds and valuations not converging for every company, it’s a tad more complex.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

I think we share very similar thoughts when it comes to position sizing. To close out this interview, I would like to give the audience a watchlist idea. Could you give a short elevator pitch on one stock on your radar at the moment and why?

Leandro: Well, I have been currently looking at an industry more than at a company: industrial gases. Gases sound boring and they are, but the industry economics look very appealing and seems to have attractive growth opportunities and a low probability of disruption. 

It’s not a stock pitch, but it’s definitely something I have been looking at lately.

Wolf of Harcourt Street

Thanks for taking the time to chat today. I’m sure there will be plenty of takeaways for the readers, including an industry to explore! Finally, where can readers find you, and are there any closing remarks you’d like to share?

Leandro

People can find me on Twitter @invesquotes and on Seeking Alpha at Best Anchor Stocks. If anyone is interested in knowing more about the service they can also send me an email to bestanchorstocks@gmail.com!

Thanks a lot for having me Wolf!

Leandro is offering an exclusive discount for Best Anchor Stocks to Wolf of Harcourt Street readers as part of this interview. The first 10 readers that click the button below will enjoy a 20% discount during their first year. There’s a 2-week free trial to check out all the content with no strings attached (easy to cancel in two clicks during the free-trial period).

Claim 20% Discount

Best Anchor Stocks is an investment research service that focuses on high-quality resilient companies with the potential to outperform the market over the long term. The strategy aims to maximize future potential returns without disregarding volatility as a risk that can impact the holding period. The goal is to build a high-quality portfolio that is easy to hold.

Leandro shares around 6 research articles per company (approximately +20k words in total), recurring follow-up articles (earnings, other topics…), and a weekly article with brief market commentary and company-specific news. He personally invests in the portfolio companies (so he cares deeply about the long-term performance of the portfolio), and there’s full transparency: subscribers get access to Leandro’s personal portfolio and all his transactions.

Claim 20% Discount

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If you found today's edition helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues on social media or via email. Your support helps to continue to provide this newsletter for FREE!

Happy investing

Wolf of Harcourt Street

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Contact me

Twitter: @wolfofharcourt

Email: wolfofharcourtstreet@gmail.com