Actionable insights — Buy-Hold-Sell List: July 2026

1. Put the operating results and the share price side by side for the same period

1. Pick one window — a year works — and list what the business did in it: revenue, units, stores, customers.
2. List what the share price did in the same window.
3. Where they point in opposite directions, write down which of the two you think is wrong and why.
4. Check the long-run operating record over the same measure, so a single good year is not mistaken for a trend.
5. Only then look at the multiple.

• Store or unit counts as the growth measure — new stores can be opened into declining sales per store; the revenue number is the check.
• Currency and country risk that the operating figures do not show: a Polish grocer's earnings are in zloty, and the multiple can be depressed by the market rather than by the company.

2. Express a target as three inputs anyone can disagree with

1. State the earnings figure, the year it applies to, and the multiple you are willing to pay.
2. Multiply and compare with today's price; convert the gap into an annual rate over the years to that date.
3. Keep the multiple defensible against the company's own history, not against the best year it ever had.
4. Publish all three inputs so a reader can substitute their own and get a different answer.

• The exit multiple doing the heavy lifting: at 15x rather than 20x the same earnings imply 36 PLN and roughly half the upside.
• Two-year-out earnings estimates being the least reliable part of the calculation, and the part stated most confidently.

3. Weight an insider purchase by who made it and what it cost them

1. Record the buyer's role, the size in shares and dollars, and the price paid.
2. Distinguish open-market purchases from option exercises and grants — only the first is a decision.
3. Weight by the buyer's information and by how much of their own wealth it represents.
4. Give extra weight to buyers with relevant outside expertise, and none to routine director qualification purchases.
5. Never treat one purchase as the thesis; treat it as corroboration of a case you already had.

• A single buy in a company with many insiders; the aggregate direction matters more than one name.
• Insiders being wrong about their own companies at exactly the moments the outside view is right — they are long the same risk you are considering.

4. State the claim weaker than the quote you are borrowing

1. When invoking an authority's rule, check whether the present situation actually satisfies it.
2. If it does not, say so, and name the weaker condition that is satisfied.
3. Describe what the stronger condition would look like, so you would recognise it if it arrived.
4. Size the position to the weaker claim, not the borrowed one.

• "Almost as good" doing a lot of work: a spread between two styles is a relative signal, while pessimism is an absolute one. They can resolve in opposite ways — the expensive side can simply fall.
• The Templeton trade being a leveraged basket of near-bankrupt companies, which is the opposite of what quality investing does. The story motivates the temperament, not the method.

5. Grade the evidence you accept for your own thesis turning

1. Decide in advance what would count as evidence that a style has turned — breadth, duration, or magnitude.
2. Check whether the names you cite are the ones you own; a portfolio-only sample proves less than a universe-wide one.
3. Compare against what the other side did over the same window.
4. Log the claim with the date, so it can be scored rather than re-asserted next month.

• Three names over four weeks as a sample size; the same letters correctly dismiss short runs when they go the other way.
• The counting metrics moving with the thesis rather than against it: 83 names undervalued on all three models, up from 69, means the universe got cheaper — which is the opposite of a rotation having happened.

6. When a second name from the same industry appears on your screen, ask whether the industry is what is cheap

1. Track how many names from one industry surface on your screens at once.
2. If more than one, decide whether you have found companies or found a sector de-rating.
3. Size accordingly — two positions in the same industry is one bet at double weight.
4. Identify the common driver, and what would have to change for the whole group to re-rate.

• Private-credit exposure being the common factor across all three — a single credit cycle would move them together.
• Screens that reward yield (Ares at 4.6%) surfacing the leveraged end of an industry first.