The hottest Equities Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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The Case For Sanity

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 26 implied HN points • 01 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The market looks massively overvalued and some investors are positioned short major indexes expecting a significant pullback.
  2. Price action is being distorted by heavy monetary intervention, retail speculation, algorithmic momentum, and passive buying, so traditional fundamentals often aren't driving valuations.
  3. Consumer demand is weakening — inflation-adjusted retail sales are negative — which raises the risk that earnings and the market could come under pressure.

The Stocks I Did Not Expect To Like

Spilled Coffee • 24 implied HN points • 07 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Price action and charts can reveal strong opportunities, so follow what the market is actually doing instead of story-driven hopes.
  2. Focus on relative strength and momentum—stocks making new highs often deserve attention regardless of whether they're labeled value or growth.
  3. Stay open-minded: profitable setups can come from legacy industrials, discount retailers, or online travel agencies, not only from flashy new tech or biotech.

My "Best Idea" Sector For 2026

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 24 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. One sector is highlighted as having the biggest upside potential for 2026, but it also carries the largest downside risk.
  2. This year’s top idea is different from last year’s winners, which were gold and silver miners that ran up strongly.
  3. Full analysis is behind a paywall and requires a paid subscription to access the complete write-up.

Two Of My Favorite Investments: Chris DeMuth

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 14 implied HN points • 15 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Ask “what would this look like if it were easy?” to reframe problems and find elegant, high-leverage solutions instead of forcing effort and complexity.
  2. Look for smaller competitors with close comparables that show a clear path to closing the market-cap gap with larger incumbents; those situations can produce big, relatively straightforward gains.
  3. Using comps to visualize an easy outcome helps identify investments where scaling feels likely and the upside is easy to justify.

One Microcap Stock I Own

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 16 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. A small energy infrastructure company is increasing its exposure to data center construction, which could diversify its revenue and boost growth.
  2. Its operations are accelerating in the Middle East and across the EMEA region, indicating geographic expansion and momentum.
  3. The business trades at roughly a 10x run‑rate P/E and has a solid balance sheet, suggesting an attractive valuation with manageable financial risk.
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Down The Path(ways)

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 13 implied HN points • 07 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. A favored sector is already making noticeable progress this year and appears to have real momentum.
  2. This piece is an early-January update, serving as an early-year check on how the sector is performing.
  3. The full write-up is behind a paywall, so you need to subscribe or sign in to read the complete analysis.

Top Links 540 Gloom over US equities. Soros on investing first and investigating later. Active clubs & the cellular landscape.

Chartbook • 371 implied HN points • 24 Oct 24
💰 Finance Equities
  1. There's a lot of concern about the future of US stocks, as some experts like Goldman Sachs are predicting gloominess. Many investors are feeling nervous about what comes next.
  2. Soros believes in investing quickly and doing research afterwards, suggesting a bold approach to investing. This method can be risky but may lead to interesting opportunities.
  3. The discussion includes active clubs and the cellular industry, indicating that there are various sectors to pay attention to. These areas might be key for future growth and innovation.

Investing Update: Has The Santa Rally Started?

Spilled Coffee • 16 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Late-week strength in tech, especially AI-linked names, pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq higher while the Dow slipped but remains on a strong monthly streak.
  2. The S&P 500 is very close to the year-end target of 6,900 — it sits around 6,835 with only seven trading days left, so the target could be decided in the final week.
  3. Since November 21 there’s been a rotation into undervalued, cyclical and economically sensitive sectors, prompting speculation that the Magnificent 7 may underperform in 2026, though that shift may not be permanent.

Stockpicker’s Paradise

Net Interest • 13 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Dispersion within the financial sector has returned after years of muted differences, creating the widest gap between top and bottom performers since 2009.
  2. That renewed dispersion is a stockpicker’s paradise: specialist, long/short managers with deep financial knowledge are outperforming generalists and capturing big winners and losers.
  3. Structural shifts like higher rates and the end of the ‘free money’ era, plus divergent performance across banks, payments and asset managers, suggest active, specialized investors may keep finding opportunities into 2026.

Illumina @ JPM - Sustainable Growth

ASeq Newsletter • 7 implied HN points • 14 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Illumina has shifted its business mix so roughly 60% of revenue now comes from clinical customers.
  2. That clinical pivot is already helping drive a return to revenue growth, with the company reporting growth in Q4.
  3. Even if research sales continue to decline, the scale of clinical growth should be enough to bring overall revenue back into growth based on straightforward calculations.

The comeback of European growth stocks

Klement on Investing • 3 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. European growth stocks are staging a comeback, with renewed investor interest in growth names across the region.
  2. Over shorter horizons of about one year, share prices are far more sensitive to changes in government bond yields than to earnings or valuation shifts.
  3. For near-term investors, movements in bond yields will often drive returns more than earnings improvements or valuation changes, so watching yields matters most.

Buybacks shouldn’t matter, but they do

Klement on Investing • 5 implied HN points • 06 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The textbook capital-allocation theory says buybacks and dividends are equivalent in a frictionless market, so buybacks should not change share prices.
  2. In practice buybacks do move prices — the impact depends on stock volatility and the share of daily trading bought back, so small daily buybacks repeated over time can produce large cumulative price gains.
  3. Buybacks force investor rebalancing (investors sell into the buyback then need to buy to restore allocations), which pushes the market higher, making buybacks an effective tool for lifting a weak share price.

If people talk about a bubble, it’s unlikely to crash soon

Klement on Investing • 3 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. It’s very hard to identify a stock bubble in real time, so you usually can’t be sure a bubble exists until after the fact.
  2. Media coverage and investor worries aren’t a reliable signal of imminent crashes; the press often misses bubbles or only calls them out after prices have already fallen.
  3. Even when a bubble exists, stocks can linger near their peak for months or even more than a year before a big drop, so crashes can be delayed and unpredictable.

How long is the long run?

Klement on Investing • 5 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Over nearly a century U.S. small-cap stocks beat large caps on average, but that average hides very long stretches of underperformance that can last decades.
  2. Factors like value and size can stop working for longer than investors can stay invested, so multi-decade waits make them impractical for many investors.
  3. Academic evidence for factor outperformance can be sample-dependent and misleading, meaning results that look strong in one historical period may reverse in another.

2025 Portfolio Results

Subsack • 4 implied HN points • 04 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The portfolio delivered strong returns (about 28% YTD) and beat the S&P by roughly 10%, with healthy CAGR and Sharpe, but remained closely tied to the market (beta ~1.05) and a tariff-driven drawdown lowered the Kelly %.
  2. Holdings are split into a risk-on sleeve of thematic growth baskets (AI, pharma, semiconductors, crypto, etc.) and a risk-off sleeve of low-volatility, high-dividend assets, rebalanced quarterly; position sizing uses Hierarchical Risk Parity with a denoised correlation matrix which improved outcomes versus other weighting methods.
  3. Planned improvements include moving to Interactive Brokers for broader market access, mining simple low-volatility/high-Sharpe strategies with VectorBT and probabilistic Sharpe analysis, and adding tools like earnings-call sentiment, options panels, and a bio-pharma catalyst strategy to enhance edge.

How to read a stock chart

Concepts of Finance 🧠 • 119 implied HN points • 14 Feb 23
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Stock charts show how a company's stock performs over time. You can see if the price is going up, down, or staying the same.
  2. Important parts of a stock chart are the price, high/low for the day, and market cap. These help you understand how the stock is doing right now and in the past.
  3. You can set different timeframes to see how a stock has performed over days or even a year. This helps you get a better picture of its trends.

Which profits matter most?

Klement on Investing • 2 implied HN points • 13 Jan 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Operating profit (EBIT) is the main profit measure that moves share prices. Institutional investors also check net income to capture interest and other real costs.
  2. Gross profit or EBITDA is often presented as ‘profits before the bad stuff’ and can be misleading. Be wary of adjusted profit numbers that deviate from accounting standards.
  3. Which metric matters most depends on the market. In the US investors focus on profitability, while in the UK and Europe they pay more attention to past and future earnings growth because growth is scarcer there.

Thematics for 2026

Subsack • 4 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. AI and its infrastructure are the central investment theme, with big-model companies, chips, and a huge jump in storage demand (RAM and disk) driving a tech supercycle.
  2. Government action and geopolitics are reshaping markets, as strategic funding, regulation, and supply‑chain moves boost defence, rare earths, nuclear, and give crypto/stablecoins clearer legitimacy.
  3. Portfolios are being rebalanced for 2026: new themes like storage, drones, LNG, robotics and space are being added while travel, luxury, gambling and clean energy are being trimmed; pharma, crypto and precious metals stay as key hedges.

Short-term contrarianism, hedge fund edition

Klement on Investing • 2 implied HN points • 27 Nov 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Hedge funds trim positions in stocks that have high short interest and are approaching their 52-week high, and they add to stocks with low short interest that are drifting away from their 52-week high.
  2. This positioning pattern is specific to hedge funds and isn’t observed with mutual funds or other types of investors.
  3. The trade appears to work short-term: high-short stocks near their 52-week high tend to fall over the next quarter, while low-short stocks far from their high tend to rise, producing profits for hedge funds.

The UK stock market concentration problem

Klement on Investing • 1 implied HN point • 04 Dec 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The big performance gap between the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 in 2025 was driven mainly by just two sectors and only six stocks.
  2. This shows the UK market is heavily concentrated, so broad indexes can be skewed by a tiny number of companies.
  3. Investors should watch concentration risk and consider diversifying beyond headline indexes or checking sector and stock weightings before assuming broad exposure.

Let me fix those forecasts for you

Klement on Investing • 7 implied HN points • 03 Jan 25
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Forecasts for stock market returns are often inaccurate. For example, analysts expected the S&P 500 to rise by about 8% in 2024, but it actually rose by 23%.
  2. Historical data shows a low correlation between predicted and actual stock market returns. Over the last 20 years, the correlation for analysts' forecasts has been very weak.
  3. Using forecast errors, we can adjust predictions for the next year. For 2025, the S&P 500's return could realistically range from a 29% drop to a 47% increase.

January 2019 Data Update 1: A reminder that equities are risky, in case you forgot!

Musings on Markets • 19 implied HN points • 03 Jan 19
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Investing in stocks comes with risk, and it’s important to remember that not every dip in prices is a chance to buy. Stocks can lose value, and there are reasons why they usually offer higher returns than safer investments.
  2. The equity risk premium, which tells us how much investors are being paid to take on the risk of stocks, has increased recently. This might suggest that stocks are undervalued compared to historical norms.
  3. Looking ahead, market conditions could be challenging with potential slowdowns in economic growth and global crises. Understanding these risks helps investors make more informed decisions.

What happens if China sneezes?

Klement on Investing • 1 implied HN point • 08 Feb 24
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Commodity prices are sensitive to both Chinese and US macro developments, with oil reacting similarly to both.
  2. Global equities are less sensitive to Chinese shocks compared to US shocks, needing a larger Chinese shock to create a similar reaction.
  3. While the impact on global equities from the Chinese economy might be smaller than a US recession, a large enough shock from China could still derail global equity markets.

January 2017 Data Update 2: The Resilience of US Equities!

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 13 Jan 17
💰 Finance Equities
  1. US stocks showed resilience in 2016 despite initial fears of a market bubble due to economic concerns. Investors were surprised by the market's recovery after significant drops early in the year.
  2. The expected return on stocks for 2017 is estimated at around 8.14%, which is higher than the historical average. However, there are concerns about companies paying out more cash than they're earning, which isn't sustainable in the long term.
  3. Interest rates are likely to rise in 2017 due to economic growth and inflation. This could impact stock prices if earnings don't keep pace, but there's also a chance that rising earnings will support the market.

Market Meltdown

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 17 Sep 08
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The stock market dropped significantly this week, with the S&P 500 down nearly 20% for the year, which is troubling but not yet disastrous.
  2. Financial companies have suffered the most from the market decline, while most other sectors are doing okay.
  3. Despite the market's fears and panic, the overall economy is still holding up well, except for the housing sector.

Data Update 3 for 2020: The Price of Risk!

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 20
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Risk is a necessary part of investing, and avoiding it completely can cost you potential returns. It's important to find a balance between taking on risk and ensuring enough return for that risk.
  2. The price of risk varies between different asset classes like bonds and equities, with markets setting these prices based on demand and supply. For instance, the default spread for bonds and the equity risk premium for stocks can help gauge expected returns.
  3. Real estate also has its own risk premium, which can change over time like stocks and bonds. Understanding this can help you make better decisions about how to allocate your investments.

Data Update 2 for 2021: The Price of Risk!

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 20 Jan 21
💰 Finance Equities
  1. The price of risk is the extra return investors seek to earn when taking on risky investments. It’s shaped by how much people are willing to spend and their feelings about market conditions.
  2. Risk premiums can change based on investors' fears and greed. When fear is high, people usually want higher risk premiums, which can lower the prices of investments.
  3. There are different ways to evaluate market risk, like looking at bond yields or estimating earnings for stocks, and these methods help us understand if investments are overvalued or undervalued.

Inflation and Investing: False Alarm or Fair Warning?

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 24 May 21
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Inflation is rising, and many people are debating whether it will be temporary or a more lasting issue. This uncertainty affects how investors think about their money.
  2. Different investments react to inflation in various ways. For example, bonds often struggle with unexpected inflation, while real estate and commodities like gold tend to do better.
  3. Understanding inflation can help you make better investment choices. Knowing how different sectors and asset types might perform can guide your decisions in uncertain economic times.

The IPO of the decade? My valuation of Facebook

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 12
💰 Finance Equities
  1. Facebook's growth has been huge, with revenues doubling every year for a while. The company seems to have a solid plan to continue growing, but there are questions about how long that can last.
  2. Operating profits for Facebook are impressive, but they might drop as the company tries to grow even more. Still, expectations are high for Facebook's financial performance compared to other companies like Google.
  3. Investing in Facebook comes with risks. While it has a lot of potential, the company is not set up to give shareholders much say in how it operates, which could be a red flag for some investors.

How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia’s overlooked stocks

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
💰 Finance Equities
  1. On-the-ground experience and local language skills create a real information edge for finding overlooked stocks in Asia.
  2. Deep, original research packaged as a paid subscription newsletter can scale into a sustainable, six-figure recurring revenue business.
  3. Running independent publishing lets you control platform, billing, and compliance, which matters when monetizing financial research in a regulated space.