The Research Thesis and Framework
How we source, stress-test, and validate every opportunity before it earns a place in your portfolio.
The Case for Proprietary Research & Asymmetric Opportunities Over Consensus
Consensus tends to arrive after the opportunity has already been priced in. Our research is oriented the other way, toward areas where coverage is thin, testing each thesis against real downside before assigning it conviction. What survives that process is asymmetric by evidence. This means spending time in places most research doesn't reach: sectors between analyst coverage gaps, structures too specialised for broad distribution, situations where the underlying fundamentals have shifted faster than the narrative around them. The work is deliberately unglamorous, verifying assumptions, tracking what changes and what doesn't, discarding theses that don't hold up rather than defending them. Conviction, when it's assigned, reflects survival through that process, not enthusiasm for an idea. It's also why our research doesn't stop at the recommendation. Positions are monitored against the same scrutiny that got them there in the first place, because an asymmetry that held six months ago doesn't necessarily hold today, and treating it as static is its own form of consensus thinking.
The Research Framework Behind Every Position
Investment Opportunity Sourcing
- Screening for coverage gaps, sectors, structures, or situations under-tracked by institutional research. - Monitoring divergence points where fundamentals are moving faster than public narrative or pricing reflects, tracked through valuation-to-growth spreads and analyst coverage density. - Drawing on proprietary networks and specialised structures not accessible through standard distribution channels. - Maintaining a live watchlist of situations approaching an inflection, ranked by estimated time-to-catalyst.
Opportunity Qualification
- Applying a defined risk-reward filter, typically a minimum 3:1 upside-to-downside ratio, before committing diligence resources to an idea. - Excluding theses built on momentum, sentiment, or narrative rather than verifiable fundamentals: revenue quality, cash conversion, balance sheet strength. - Reducing a wide opportunity set to a shortlist using base screens on liquidity, promoter/management quality, and governance history. - Sizing the potential opportunity against the cost of diligence, not every asymmetry clears the threshold to pursue.
Investment Thesis Due Diligence
- Independently verifying data and assumptions, cash flow reconciliation, debt covenant checks, related-party transaction review, rather than relying on management guidance or sell-side coverage. - Modelling downside scenarios explicitly: bear-case IRR, maximum drawdown, and breakeven assumptions, not just the base case. Cross-checking the thesis against comparable situations and historical base rates for similar setups - Identifying second-order risks, regulatory, currency, concentration, that don't affect the thesis directly but could compound if triggered.
Investment Thesis Due Diligence
- Independently verifying data and assumptions, cash flow reconciliation, debt covenant checks, related-party transaction review, rather than relying on management guidance or sell-side coverage. - Modelling downside scenarios explicitly: bear-case IRR, maximum drawdown, and breakeven assumptions, not just the base case. - Cross-checking the thesis against comparable situations and historical base rates for similar setups - Identifying second-order risks, regulatory, currency, concentration, that don't affect the thesis directly but could compound if triggered.
Active Investment Monitoring
- Re-underwriting positions on a fixed quarterly cadence, not only when something goes wrong. - Tracking invalidation triggers set at the conviction stage against live financials and acting when thresholds are breached. - Reporting performance against the original thesis, tracking error, realised vs. expected IRR, thesis drift, transparently, including underperformance and revised calls. - Separating a bad outcome from a broken thesis: attributing underperformance to market beta, thesis error, or timing before recommending a change.
How Research Translates to Portfolios
Conviction Sizing, Not Uniform Allocation
Position size is scaled to the strength of conviction and the depth of the underwriting behind it, higher-conviction theses earn larger allocations, not equal weight by default.
Portfolio Fit Over Standalone Merit
An opportunity strong on its own can still be declined if it duplicates existing exposure, breaches concentration limits, or shifts the portfolio's risk profile beyond what the mandate allows.
Staged Entry, Not All at Once
Capital is deployed in tranches where the thesis allows for it, validating early signals before committing full size, rather than treating research approval as a single trigger.
Continuous Monitoring Post-Entry
A position's place in the portfolio is reassessed on the same cadence and criteria used to select it, research doesn't end at allocation, it continues until the position is exited.
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