About Hunting Alphas

Who Am I?

I'm Vish, founder of Hunting Alphas. I previously worked as an investment analyst at a USD 6B AUM buyside firm for a few years. I covered the Technology, Industrials, Metals & Mining sectors across Developed and Emerging Markets, with a strong bottom-up fundamentals focus.

Then I went independent to put my own ideas about playing the markets to the test. I published hundreds of stock articles on Seeking Alpha under the 'Hunting Alphas' name, garnering thousands of readers as followers. Now, I am transitioning to publish on my own Hunting Alphas platform.

Hunting Alphas is a tactical research boutique delivering high-frequency 5-Minute Stock Pitches on my best alpha-generating ideas from a >9,000 universe of global stocks, backed by unusually detailed portfolio performance analytics and portfolio disclosures.

Why I Created Hunting Alphas

There's a lot of accessible investment research out there for both institutional and retail investors. But it's hard to know which content is more likely to help generate alpha and outperformance.

The problem: Poor signal-to-noise and high time cost, particularly for the very lengthy deep-dives. Few analysts share a transparent track record to demonstrate their skill in identifying the alpha opportunities in the market and make a case for why they are worth reading.

My solution: I founded Hunting Alphas to deliver 5-minute actionable stock pitches, focused on my portfolio holdings and watchlist, backed by real skin-in-the-game:

• Live, real-money track record (USD 1.4M AUM) from Jul'24 onwards.
• High annualized alpha vs SPY AUD benchmark.
• Broad-based returns across various factor exposures, low portfolio drawdown and a strategy that is scalable to >USD 100M AUM.

Portfolio Context

• Live, real-money, long-only, zero-leverage portfolio (USD 1.4M AUM), investing in global stocks and related traditional ETFs (no leverage, inverse exposures, ETNs, or derivatives) in mostly Developed and some Emerging markets), primarily via a Self Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF).
• Portfolio's base currency is in AUD. Benchmark is SPY AUD (S&P500 priced in AUD). This is the benchmark as it is my opportunity cost of capital (if I was no good as an investor, I would follow Uncle Warren and Jack Bogle's advice to invest in the S&P500 via a low-cost index fund).
• Capital is managed via an IBKR Advisor structure, primarily via a Self-Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF).
• Portfolio constructed using a dynamic core-satellite approach. The core is a passive market index (usually VOO) when I have a risk-on stance or cash (typically USD, AUD, EUR or GBP cash based on my forex market view) when I have a risk-off stance. The satellite positions represent my active selection picks.
• Portfolio weight to the core allocation is dynamic; it depends on the number and conviction of active satellite ideas. Alpha is generated primarily via the satellite picks, but also via risk-off vs risk-on core position maneuvering.

Portfolio Process & Characteristics

Investable Universe & Selectivity

• Investable universe: >9,000 global stocks & ETFs (MCAP > USD 500M + minimum liquidity thresholds appropriate for portfolio AUM).
• 10–15% of investable universe enter watchlist on sustained multi-quarter momentum and acceleration.
• Portfolio entry is highly selective: typically 0.4% of the >9,000 ticker universe.

Portfolio Construction & Management

• Portfolio selection and sizing decisions are based on my overall judgement and relative ranking of the fundamental business drivers, valuations and technical momentum.
• Dynamic core-satellite: Core = index or cash (risk-on/risk-off); alpha generation primarily from active satellite positions.
• Position exit or trim proceeds default to core allocation.
• Typical active satellite positions holding period: multiple weeks to quarters.

Source of Investment Edge

• Astute judgement of a few, core drivers of a stock.

Ideal Environments

• Improving or broadening market breadth and major market leadership transitions due to a higher number of active satellite pick opportunities.

Key Risks

• Narrow index leadership (but I have still performed well despite Mag-7-driven index runs).
• Core risk-on/risk-off timing is more susceptible to timing error.

Research Process

• Building and maintaining spreadsheets showing historical data on the financials, key metric disclosures, guidance and surprise trends vs consensus estimates, consensus revisions, time-series values of historical valuation multiples, key coincident or leading indicators of performance, short interests, transaction multiples for prior M&A and more.
• Keeping tabs on relevant industry news and reports plus other people's coverage of the stock.
• Very rarely build DCFs and project financials into the future as that is not a reliable source of edge for me. Instead, I assess how a company has delivered and my broad outlook on the 5 key drivers of a DCF valuation + going concern check:

1. Revenues
2. Costs and margins
3. Cash flow conversion
4. Capex and investments
5. Interest rates (which affect the discount rate/opportunity cost of capital)
6. Funding sources and fundraising prospects

• In some cases, especially for companies trading at very high near-term multiples, I do a reverse DCF to make sense of the implied growth CAGR implications.
• Technical analysis of momentum, especially relative to the S&P500, taking into account currency strength is a core aspect of entry and exit position timing.

5-Minute Stock Pitch Format, Models, Posting and Access Protocol

• Only a brief overview of the company; no long origin stories and historical narratives unless relevant to the future stock view. I do repeat lengthy background context that is easily available on the internet.
• An elevator pitch thesis that takes less than 30 seconds to read.
• An evidence-based view of each elevator-pitch thesis point.
• A takeaway section with a judgement of the fundamental, valuation and technical perspectives, as well as the overall view and my positioning.
• In all 5-Minute pitches published directly on this site, there will also be a spreadsheet model, accessible only for Hunter Tier members.
• To showcase my previous work and track record, I have included an archive of hundreds of 5-Minute Pitches that I have published on Seeking Alpha. Almost all of these pitches are behind Seeking Alpha's paywall.
• I will gradually publish less on Seeking Alpha as this Hunting Alphas platform grows bigger. Rest assured that all 5-Minute Pitches published natively on this site will not be disseminated anywhere else.
• Every month, I will make 5 of the pitches published on Seeking Alpha available to read fully via an official gift link. Look for the 'Full Access' tag for both of these categories.

Target Audience

• The 5-Minute pitches are very accessible to even beginning investors as the ideas are communicated with simple language, with industry-specific jargon explained. But note that general investing and accounting jargon will be used.
• The Portfolio Performance posts have a lot of analysis types that only serious investors, institutional allocators or anyone well-versed in the CFA or academic finance may be familiar with. But this should not discourage anyone without that background; simply learn what you do not understand with AI tools.

Usage of AI Tools

Where I use AI

• I use AI for retrieval of information from reliable-source document inputs.
• I use custom AI deep research reports for getting a broad overview of a business or industry.
• I query AI to demystify industry jargon and always refer to the cited sources for the answers to avoid hallucination risks.

Where I do NOT use AI

• I never use AI to generate any part of the 5-Minute pitch; everything is written by me in my own words.
• I never use AI for processing and analyzing data in spreadsheets.
• I never use AI to summarize or write comments and emails.