Stock Research Summary & Roadmap for This Substack
9/29/25
Stock Research Posts 1-9
The stock research posts 1-9 are from my internship last summer with EGA, and are mostly global small cap equities from a screener that I was tasked with going through. There are some big wins (Ryohin Keikaku up 159%, Austal up 189%, Aritzia up 89%) but also a few big losses. (TGS ASA -34%, Greggs -50%) I’m happy with my results as six out of nine stocks are up since my research was shared, with an average return of 42.68%.
My Reasoning Behind Starting This Stock Research Series
Something I’ve meant to do for a long time is create a trading journal for my portfolio where I can go over my rationale for my investments. This is something that many top portfolio managers, traders, successful investors have credited with much of their success.
My reasoning behind starting this process is that I’m likely to do better on investments if I can take the time to write out my thoughts, and come to a more coherent thesis before entering into a position. It could also be helpful for the purposes of understanding where my edge lies and what industries I do well in.
My hope with writing out more of my investment theses is that I also focus in on key catalysts / drivers of returns that will be easier to track. For example if one of my catalysts is that XYZ Company will buyback shares over the next 18 months — that’s easier to validate than just saying XYZ Company is undervalued.
Stocks I’ve Bought and Done Well With
Personal friends of mine as well as my family will know I have been a Meta bull since their historic drop in February of 2022.
I didn’t have a full fledged thesis, but my main argument was that they would simply stop dumping money into Reality Labs, and that they had one of the largest advertising businesses in the world, as well as one of the highest active user bases in the world. With a cost basis of $177 per share, I have done pretty well on Meta.
My latest substantial investment was a Google LEAPS call I bought around my graduation back in May, and my main argument was that the concerns that AI (ChatGPT) was killing their search business was overblown. It also helps that they have the single best advertising machine in the world in YouTube.
I want to write a full post on why I’m bullish on Google longterm but a large part of that for me is YouTube, as my generation and all younger generations use YouTube as their primary source of content over traditional television media. The cost of new content on their platform is little to nothing (pretty much only whatever it costs to host the data and run the servers) and they get a 45% cut of all AdSense revenue. Creators are incentivized to create content that engages viewers and keeps them on the platform, and YouTube has very little work they have to put in on their end to earn that revenue.
Data per https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/
The Stock I Bought and Did Not Do Well With
I’ve been lucky to avoid major financial losses in my short time spent investing in the stock market, but the one stock I’ve lost a decent amount on so far (paper losses btw!) is CoStar Group. They’re a larger company with a collection of real estate brands and high amounts of vertical integration. They own Homes.com, Apartments.com, Matterport, etc.
I was sold on CSGP 0.00%↑ by one of my real estate professors in college and didn’t do enough due diligence to come up with my own valuation and bought on his strong conviction in the management. This is a mistake I hope to avoid by starting this research process and journaling my thoughts on each company that I invest in before I do so.
The One That Got Away (For Now)
A company I have been a customer of for all of my investing career is Robinhood HOOD 0.00%↑ as they are by far the best user experience in the investing/fintech space and funnily enough I have wanted to invest in them for years now. I bought some shares during their IPO process, sold after I got cold feet and they went down a bit for a small loss.
Back in March of this year, I was researching Robinhood as an investment because I love their core products and their roadmap to expand into Banking as part of their product mix. I got busy with finals, graduation, and college in general and never really got around to finishing that research as I felt as though HOOD 0.00%↑ had “run up” too much in 2025. Well, +234.93% later, I feel really dumb now.
One of my main struggles with investing has been my willingness to buy on the way up — and maybe right when I capitulate to this error I’ll be buying the top of this bull market, but it’s something I’m trying to fix process-wise.
I think narrowing down on a valuation for any given company is the best way to do this so in future posts I will make some attempt to assign value to the business I am researching in efforts to rectify this flaw in my process.
Some companies I am interested in researching in the near term include: Google, Intel, Robinhood, and a deeper look at CoStar as I still hold that in my portfolio.
Below I will also link a quick google sheets document I made that tracks the main stocks I have done research on and their corresponding returns.
Consider subscribing if you found this valuable, I really appreciate it and it lets me know to continue posting similar content.