The Latticework Monday Morning Briefing is our weekly “Guide to the Markets” for long term-oriented investors. It is sent on a separate mailing list (complimentary to members). If you do not wish to receive it, opt out here.
Ideas from our Weekly Inspiration newsletter
We highlight a few stock write-ups from the latest Weekly Inspiration:
Wolf of Harcourt argues that after a 41% drawdown driven by two 2026 guidance reductions, the market prices Adyen (Amsterdam: ADYEN) for an overly pessimistic trajectory. FY2025 delivered 21% constant-currency revenue growth, a 53% EBITDA margin ahead of target, and 87% free cash flow conversion; a ten-year DCF at a 14% revenue CAGR yields EUR 1,302 of fair value against roughly EUR 885 today. Competition from Stripe and PayPal, and further guidance cuts, remain the principal risks.
Polymath Investor makes the case for BioSyent (Canada: RX), a specialty pharma with no research risk and no patent cliff, with 63 profitable quarters and a revenue CAGR of nearly 20% over more than a decade. The Oral Science acquisition at 6.3x trailing EBITDA and the newly approved Thyconvi cut FeraMAX to ~40% of revenue, adding growth pillars the market has yet to credit. At 19x earnings and a 7.6% FCF yield, disciplined buybacks and ~20% CEO ownership support the thesis.
Reimar Scholz describes The Property Franchise Group (UK: TPFG), the country’s largest franchised estate agency network, as converting local entrepreneurship into capital-light, recurring royalties: roughly 70% of earnings come from franchising, and 70% of those fees from lettings rather than cyclical house sales. Adjusted EPS has compounded near 23% annually since 2013, on 45% EBITDA margins and returns on capital above 20%. At a GBP 287M market cap and 1.9x book, with a 3% share of a fragmented market, the shares appear undemanding.
James Emanuel views Universal Music Group (Amsterdam: UMG) as a compounding intellectual-property royalty engine mispriced after a post-earnings selloff: at EUR 14.54 the market values the business near EUR 26 billion, roughly half the EUR 54 billion Pershing Square offer the board rejected three months earlier. Downtown integration expenses create transitory margin pressure, yet second-quarter revenue grew 13.3% and EBITDA margins held at 20.5%. Management’s EUR 500 million buyback above current prices underscores the disconnect.
As always, the above theses reflect the linked authors’ views (available here), not Latticework recommendations.
Articles worth your time
The Value of Consistency, by Howard Lichstrahl, argues that consistency and the avoidance of unrecoverable loss, not episodic brilliance, produce top-percentile results. His central example, drawn from a 1990 Howard Marks memo, is a pension manager who over fourteen years never ranked above the 27th percentile or below the 47th in any single year, and finished the full period in the fourth percentile. The arithmetic underneath is familiar and easy to ignore: recovering a 50% loss requires a 100% gain. Howard extends the point to balance sheets, preferring businesses funded by internal cash flow over those dependent on capital markets, with Silicon Valley Bank’s duration mismatch as the cautionary case.
Did Situational Awareness inflate the AI bubble?, by Andrew Walker, works through the implosion of a hedge fund that reportedly gained near 500% in six months and then fell 85% to 90% from its peak, and asks whether forced selling creates bargains. His answer is usually not: Archegos holdings kept falling for years after that liquidation even as the market rose, because the selloff signaled genuine capital misallocation rather than a technical dislocation. He cites Goldman’s estimate of 1.2 million monthly margin calls in South Korea, about 3% of the adult population, as a measure of how far the leverage has spread.
China and the Iran War Oil Shock That Wasn’t, by Jordan Schneider and Phoebe Chow, asks why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz never produced the $200 oil that analysts forecast. The answer is not Western policy: prices rose roughly 60%, with physically delivered barrels reaching $130 to $140 in the hardest-hit regions, and SPR releases ran at 1.4 million barrels a day, above expectations but far short of the shortfall. What closed the gap was China’s unexplained cut of about five million barrels a day of imports, drawing on a stockpile the West can neither see nor influence.
SpaceX, PE, VC, and Quacking Ducks, by Harvey Sawikin, argues that fund managers raise capital precisely when demand peaks and valuations are worst, systematically destroying limited partner returns whatever the fiduciary language says. His illustration is ARK Invest, which he calculates destroyed $14 billion of shareholder wealth over the ten years through 2024 despite headline returns: the flagship gained 150% in 2020, drew $30 billion of inflows, then fell 67% in 2022. He extends the pattern to venture, where SPV co-investments let managers grow assets by re-marking portfolio companies upward, saturating limited partner exposure prematurely.
New in this week’s deck
We extend our coverage with new slides featuring “key takeaways” from selected videos and podcasts — based on feedback from fellow member Pedro Zuloaga; thank you, Pedro! This week’s set runs from and Jeffrey Gundlach on the yield curve to Bob Robotti on North American gas, David Heinemeier Hansson on staying small on purpose, and Michelle Knudsen on the NYU endowment, and more.
The full deck
The 97-page Monday Morning Briefing is available to members. It spans our weekly scoreboard, idea-generation screens (this week including quality names near their 52-week lows, the quality-compounders screen, micro-cap “tiny titans,” recent spin-offs, activist campaigns, and valuation screens across the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, and Korea), market valuation and positioning, and the macro and fixed-income picture. We welcome your feedback as the format continues to evolve.
Feedback on the Briefing
“Most of what I monitor, all in one place. Great value add.” —Brad Lummis
“Loving these Monday briefings!” —Jon Bartel
“Tightly presented and easy to digest. I just spent 20 minutes going through it, and it’s helped to level set me for the week ahead.” —Michael Loftis
“A great piece and thoughtfully assembled.” —Brian Wolf
“I have never seen more valuable content in one place.” —Bill Coleman
“Worth its weight in gold.” —Shree Viswanathan
A few words on the format
The Briefing is designed to answer a deceptively simple question. If you were sitting down before the weekly market open, as an investor rather than a trader, what would you want in front of you?
Each week, the Briefing walks through four parts.
Weekly Review & Outlook covers equity performance, sector moves, the earnings just reported, and the earnings coming up, alongside curated editorial highlights from our Weekly Inspiration newsletter.
Idea Generation surfaces candidates from screens we run: biggest decliners, names near 52-week lows, low multiples, high FCF yields, spinoffs, activist situations, buybacks, short interest, and more.
Market Valuation & Positioning steps back to the index level: the Buffett Indicator, aggregate multiples versus history, S&P 500 concentration, equal-weight versus cap-weight, and long-run factor returns.
Macro & Fixed Income rounds out the picture with rates, credit spreads, the Fed balance sheet, the dollar, labor, regional PMIs, and housing.
Table of contents
Note: Slides showing data that is updated on a monthly or quarterly basis may not be included in every issue of the Monday Morning Briefing.
Part 1 — Weekly Review & Outlook
Global equity index performance across regions
GICS sector total returns
Weekly commodity price changes
Quarterly earnings: biggest beats and misses
Selected insights from earnings calls
Top reporters by market cap, week ahead
Takeaways from featured Weekly Inspiration articles
What’s new in AI for investment managers
Curated video and audio from Weekly Inspiration
Key takeaways from each featured video and podcast (new this week)
Part 2 — Idea Generation
S&P 500 stocks with the largest weekly declines
Largest weekly declines among US stocks
Stocks nearest their 52-week lows
Key takeaways from curated analytical articles
Open-market purchases by officers, directors, 10+% owners
S&P 500 share repurchase activity, trailing twelve months
FINRA consolidated short interest
Ranked by short interest as a percent of shares outstanding
S&P 500 highest FCF yield (ex-financials)
Three-year ann. FCF yield for US stocks $300+mn (ex-fin.)
S&P 500 highest trailing earnings yield (all sectors)
Three-year ann. earnings yield for US stocks $300+mn
S&P 500 cheapest by EV/EBITDA (ex-financials)
EV / three-year ann. EBITDA for US stocks $300+mn
S&P 500 cheapest by price / tangible book value
Cheapest by price / tangible book for stocks $300+mn
S&P 500 highest 5-year average ROIC
Highest 5-year ROIC for stocks ex-S&P 500
Canada equity valuation screens
UK equity valuation screens
Germany equity valuation screens
Australia equity valuation screens
Japan equity valuation screens
Korea equity valuation screens
Notable activist campaigns and acquisition proposals
Featured spin-off opportunities
US micro-caps, P/S < 1.0, ranked by 52-week price change
Part 3 — Market Valuation & Positioning
Equity market value / GDP
World equity market cap / world GDP
S&P 500 deflated by M2 money supply
After-tax corporate profits / GDP
S&P 500 trailing P/E
S&P 500 earnings yield vs. 10-year Treasury
Trailing P/E by GICS sector
Top 10 holdings by index weight
RSP / SPY relative performance, trailing one year
Russell 2000 / S&P 500 relative performance, five years
S&P 500 breadth indicators
Money market fund assets and ETF category returns
CBOE VIX implied volatility term structure
FINRA net margin debt — customer securities margin accounts
S&P 500 annual price returns and largest intra-year drawdowns
Fama/French value spread — gap between cheap and expensive
Fama/French HML factor — cumulative return spread by decade
Growth of $1 invested in Fama/French style portfolios since 1926
Part 4 — Macro & Fixed Income
U.S. Treasury yield curve
10-year Treasury yield minus year-over-year CPI
U.S. high yield credit spreads
Federal Reserve total assets and composition
M2 money stock, year-over-year change
Total public debt as a percent of GDP
Trade-weighted U.S. dollar index
Unemployment rate and initial jobless claims
Regional Fed manufacturing diffusion indices
30-year mortgage rate and housing starts, trailing ten years
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