The best investments are rarely hidden. They are usually sitting in plain sight, in companies most investors have heard of, mispriced because the market is extrapolating the recent past instead of looking forward, flattening a nuanced debate into a simple narrative, or waiting for a certainty that only arrives after the price has moved. Aquitaine Equity Research exists to find those situations and take the other side of them.
The Aquitaine Variant Portfolio
The Aquitaine Variant Portfolio (AVP) puts all of this on the record: a concentrated, long-only portfolio consisting primarily of U.S. mid- to mega-cap equities. No options, no leverage. Every name is owned by me or by accounts under my control. Performance is tracked publicly against the S&P 500, with a single objective: significant long-term outperformance.
Who writes this?
I’m Luke Emerson, a former buy-side analyst and CFA charterholder.
I start from a position of humility, because the odds of achieving my objective are not high, to put it mildly. Over the past decade, roughly 90% of active equity fund managers failed to beat their benchmarks. So if that’s the base rate—and one imagines it’s more than a little lower outside that cohort—it stands to reason that a typical research process is unlikely to yield atypical results.
But an unconventional approach isn’t sufficient either; it must also play to your strengths. Mine are unglamorous: I’m a good listener (or so I’ve been told), and I’m competitive. Hence the defining feature of my process, which is the inordinate amount of time I spend listening.
A typical position involves at least a dozen hours of it: earnings calls, management interviews, and podcast appearances, often heard more than once—because tone, cadence, and changes in delivery reveal things transcripts do not. (Though I read plenty of those too.) Over time that builds a mental database of management profiles, so when an executive departs from baseline, it becomes easier to notice and, just as importantly, easier to judge whether the departure actually means something.
My recent deep dive on Airbnb is a good illustration of what it can turn up. At more than 30% of the portfolio on publication, with a cost basis of ~$119, the stock has since traded above $180.
What does a paid subscription include?
Original, candid research built around the handful of analytical debates that actually determine the stock price. No recycled talking points and no sugarcoating. The goal is to surface what the sell side cannot or will not say, and what most of the buy side either doesn’t know or would rather keep to itself.
Thesis updates and watchlist monitoring. Earnings reactions, material developments, changes to the underlying thesis, and honest post-mortems when I’m wrong.
Real-time AVP visibility. Position sizing, entries and exits, adds and trims — with advance notice of all trades via subscriber chat.
Direct access. Subscriber chat is where everything that doesn’t fit in an article goes: what I make of a name I’m unlikely to write up, what I’m working on now, what I looked at and passed on and why. My pieces run long and could always run longer—a good deal gets cut, but very little goes unconsidered. If a thesis leaves your question unanswered, chances are the chat won’t.
What readers are saying?
“Luke is a brilliant analyst. We believe he wrote THE deep dive on Disney.”
- Value Punks“I just finished reading your latest deep dive—phenomenal work.”
- Neel R., Portfolio Manager“Hi Luke, big fan—thanks for all the amazing content I get in my inbox.”
- Christopher K., Portfolio Manager
What is “Aquitaine”?
(Ack-wih-tain, not Aqua-tain.)
Aquitaine is a historical region in southwestern France, home to modern-day Bordeaux. The Romans planted its first vineyards two thousand years ago; today it is one of the world’s most prestigious and valuable wine-producing regions.
The name is a standing reminder of two things.
First, think long-term. Most of what demands an investor’s attention on a given day is noise dressed up as signal: urgent in the moment, forgotten within the quarter, if not the week. Meanwhile, attention spans and investor time horizons have both been shrinking for decades, which has never made the long view more valuable. As Bill Ackman observed:
“The vast majority of asset management firms have very short-term money … Even for hedge funds, about half the money can leave every year. It’s hard to be a long-term investor if your money can leave overnight.”
Second, learn from history. Charlie Munger’s version — it’s good to learn from your mistakes, better to learn from other people’s — is well worn but hard to improve on. I try to do both, while keeping my own contributions to other people’s education to a minimum.
