Over the past decade, more than 80% of active equity fund managers underperformed their benchmarks.
Which would seem to settle it: if the professionals can’t beat the market with research teams behind them, a direct line to investor relations, and data budgets most investors couldn’t justify, then surely stock selection is a fool’s errand for everyone else. But they carry one disadvantage the rest of us don’t. Bill Ackman:
“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.”
The consequence is that many genuinely compelling opportunities are untouchable to them – not because the analysis is beyond them, but because nobody can say precisely when the payoff lands, and the money may not still be there when it does. Taking the other side of that requires nothing so demanding as a holding period like Buffett’s. Being able to wait ~18 to 24 months is enough.
That flexibility is helpful, though nowhere near sufficient. What you do with it is the whole question, and on the evidence above, a conventional process is unlikely to produce unconventional results. Mine is built around what other investors cannot or will not do, and almost none of it is clever: earnings calls going back years, fireside chats, interviews, the same again for the competition, often heard more than once, at a volume per position that would make most investors’ eyes roll. Mostly, it is just listening. The goal is an insight, and preferably more than one, that shows up in no stock screen – and on no screen at all.
My greatest advantage is that I don’t find any of it boring. (As Novak Djokovic put it, to be good at tennis you must like hitting the ball.) Over time those hours accumulate into something like a mental library: an executive’s tone and cadence, habitual qualifications, and past enthusiasm measured against what actually followed. Any departure from it – including the absence of a familiar caveat – becomes far easier to notice and to weigh. Airbnb is the clearest recent example of what that can turn up. Airbnb is the clearest recent example of what that can turn up.
Brian Chesky had spent a year discussing the company’s new businesses in carefully hedged terms, on earnings calls and across a long media tour, and then, on a January podcast, departed from that framing sharply and materially, without the walk-back that usually followed. What he was suddenly willing to commit to implied consensus estimates were billions of dollars too low. The stock has since crossed $190, roughly 75% above its 52-week low.
The Aquitaine Variant Portfolio
That work is expressed in the Aquitaine Variant Portfolio (AVP): a concentrated, long-only portfolio, with no options and no leverage of any kind. The returns are meant to be a record of stock selection and portfolio management, and nothing else. Every company is held by accounts under my control at directionally similar weights.
The holdings tend to share the following attributes:
An excellent management team, above all the CEO
Growth faster than the index’s, or a clear path to it
Returns on capital well above the index’s, or a clear path to them
A balance sheet with ample room for unwanted surprises
A purchase price closer to the 52-week low than the high, in most cases
Without exception, each was bought at a substantial discount to what I thought it would be worth within ~18 to 24 months. As of September 2026, the AVP is up ~46% against ~13% for the S&P 500, with a beta of roughly 1.2, measured weekly against SPY since inception.
What a free subscription includes
The opening of every deep dive, occasional full pieces, and enough of the reasoning to judge whether the rest is worth paying for.
What a paid subscription includes
Original, candid research built around the handful of analytical debates that actually determine the share price. No recycled talking points and no sugarcoating. Bear cases are argued in their strongest form rather than their most convenient one, on the view that you cannot intelligently own something without understanding what you are betting against.
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, through the AVP subscriber dashboard, along with advance notice of all trades via subscriber chat.
Direct access. Most of what I think never makes it into an article. Subscriber chat is where the rest of it goes, fully formed or not: a view on a company I’m unlikely to write up, something new on a holding that doesn’t warrant a full post, and anything timely – news I’m reacting to the day it lands rather than whenever the next piece is ready.
How often, and what it costs
At least ten deep dives a year, plus a steady stream of shorter pieces – thesis updates, earnings reactions, and the occasional name I’ve looked at and passed on. A subscription is $400 a year, or 0.4% of a $100,000 portfolio: a rounding error against a single position sized wrong.
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, famed for its wine; the Romans planted the first vineyards there two millennia ago. The name is a reminder to think beyond the next quarter and to learn from what came before. History offers no shortage of expensive lessons someone else has already paid for. I try to learn from those, while keeping my own contributions to other people’s education to a minimum.
Get in touch
I’m Luke Emerson, a former buy-side equity analyst and CFA charterholder. If anything here raises a question – about the portfolio, the process, or whether any of this is useful to you – email me at luke@aquitaineresearch.com or find me in the subscriber chat. I read everything, and I answer nearly all of it.
