Q2 2025 Portfolio Update: Delivering a 14.7 % YTD Gain in a Flat Market
Reviewing our well beloved theses.
Three months have passed since our last update, so it’s time to revisit the Buried Bargains portfolio, our paid-subscriber vehicle that bundles the best ideas highlighted in Undervalued and Undercovered. Launched on 20 January, the portfolio has delivered a 14.7 % return through the close of trading on 29 May, while the major indexes have been flat to negative. The chart below illustrates the comparative performance.
We are beating all the major indexes by a wide margin, this is not to show off I think that we still have a lot of work to do and huge returns to uncover.
Almost ten months have passed since I launched this Substack, and what a journey it has been. I began with zero audience, no Twitter presence and no industry contacts, yet today we have grown to more than 1,700 subscribers, drawn in more than 3,000 followers, and converted a healthy cohort of paying members. I’m genuinely grateful for every single one of you.
Since day one we have published research on 35 companies. Taken together, those ideas have delivered an average total return of 29.09 % and an average IRR of 58.3 %. That record, in my view, underscores our mission: uncovering overlooked, undervalued companies before the broader market catches on.
Among the brightest examples are Intellego (511% IRR) and Theon (240% IRR); we were the first research outlet to release full investment theses on these names, and the market has more than validated that early work. Several other positions have also compounded quietly but handsomely, as you will see in the table below.
Not every call has been a winner. Kohl’s (KSS) and New Fortress Energy (NFE) remain our largest laggards to date—NFE is included here for transparency even though the core thesis focused on its bonds. I have excluded XLMedia, however, because shareholders were offered an exit at 11.5 p via tender, essentially a break-even relative to our initiation price.
Below you will find a complete scorecard showing each company’s price at publication, its 29 May closing price, the total return, and the resulting IRR.
I have several compelling theses in the pipeline, along with fresh developments on companies we already follow that appear to offer timely entry points. My overarching method remains straightforward: I read voraciously until I uncover a niche the market is neglecting, immerse myself until I understand it almost as well as an industry insider, examine the space from multiple angles, and then use that edge to identify companies whose valuations misprice their true potential. The Buried Bargains portfolio distills the ten to twenty best of these ideas into a single, deliberately diversified vehicle designed to perform across market conditions.
Turning to the current line-up, we are still holding a modest cash reserve of roughly 5 %. Given what looks like an increasingly volatile backdrop, I prefer to keep a little more dry powder on hand so we can act quickly when mispricings emerge.
Below you will find the updated performance table, showing returns for each position through the close on 29 May.
(The following content is exclusive to paid subscribers as I disclosed the positions and sizing of the Buried Bargains portfolio, subscribe for less than a dollar a day and have access to the portfolio along with weekly investment thesis in undervalued and under the radar companies)