Hi Apes!🍌

This is our monthly portfolio review, where we look at the performances of our respective portfolios and deep dives. For the new apes, we have the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 stocks)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 stocks)

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Our portfolios performed in line with the market in March, which is no mean feat given our concentration and market volatility from incessant headlines and developments surrounding the Iran war. Opportunistically, we raised some cash by trimming silver exposure and are now sitting on 10-12% cash in each of the portfolios, preserving optionality for fat pitches. Risk management remains key here, sometimes it is best to do less and sit out of forecasting short term war outcomes/headlines, where one runs the risk of getting whipsawed on the daily. Our well balanced barbell of precious metals - traditional energy helps us to navigate the binary outcomes of war over the short term.

Portfolio Rules

1. There is no day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward over 1-3 years. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know this)
2. Maximum of 10% cash position in each portfolio
3. There will be tactical buys/sells (maybe a few times per month) and I send these through the chat as and when I make the changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

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What are the charts telling us this month?

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Hi Apes!🍌

This is our monthly portfolio review, where we look at the performances of our respective portfolios and deep dives. For the new apes, we have the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 stocks)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 stocks)

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Our portfolios charge ahead with some serious outperformance in February, and are comfortably ahead of all market indices. We have raised about 5-7% cash in each of the portfolios by trimming positions in Gold, Silver and PGM miners. Risk management against a (still very) shaky macro backdrop given ongoing US-Iran war means preserving dry powder and the optionality of playing from a position of strength. Cash at key decision points (particularly when the technicals support the macro view) frees up both mental and actual capital for redeployment.

Portfolio Rules

1. There is no day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward over 1-3 years. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know this)
2. Maximum of 10% cash position in each portfolio
3. There will be tactical buys/sells (maybe a few times per month) and I send these through the chat as and when I make the changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

Read more

What are the charts telling us this month?

Read more

Hi Apes!🍌

This is our monthly portfolio review, where we look at the performances of our respective portfolios and deep dives. For the new apes, we have the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 stocks)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 stocks)

  ---

Our portfolios continue to build on a strong start and we are now pulling ahead of all market indices. We remain fully deployed here, but will look to raise some cash/rebalance away from the precious metals complex to preserve some optionality over first half this year.

Portfolio Rules

1. There is no day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward over 1-3 years. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know this)
2. Maximum of 10% cash position in each portfolio
3. There will be tactical buys/sells (maybe a few times per month) and I send these through the chat as and when I make the changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

Read more

What are the charts telling us this month?

Read more

#1 » Which Country is a Dictatorship Again?

Since 2020, China has been labelled “un-investable” by practically all institutional allocators for the following reasons: (1) State intervention in free markets, (2) Arbitrary regulations and the erosion of Rule of Law in favour of Rule by Law (in service of common prosperity), (3) Geopolitical rail risk in th…

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Hi Apes!🍌

This is our monthly portfolio review, where we look at the performances of our respective portfolios and deep dives. For the new apes, we have the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 stocks)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 stocks)

  ---

Our strong start continues across our portfolios. We remain fully deployed into the new year, but will start raising some cash particularly from the precious metals complex to preserve some optionality over first half this year.

Portfolio Rules

1. There is no day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward over 1-3 years. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know this)
2. Maximum of 10% cash position in each portfolio
3. There will be tactical buys/sells (maybe a few times per month) and I send these through the chat as and when I make the changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

Read more

What are the charts telling us this month?

Read more

#1 » Silver - Surfing the Blow Off Top

Blink of an eye, Silver is up >50% over 1 month. Overbought is a feature of bull markets, not a bug. With that said, what comes next? Is this THE top?

This article from Alexander Campbell (ex-head of commodities, Bridgewater 2011-2015) has been making the rounds on X, and it is worth a full read. He captured the bull…

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#1 » Gold vs Oil

Goehring & Rozencwajg produce top notch research on the natural resources space, and just a couple of days ago, they wrote a piece titled “Gold vs Oil”. The contention here is that we are potentially seeing the green shoots of market leadership flowing from Gold to Oil.

I certainly think there could be a sea of opportunities come mid-2026…

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#1 » AI Bubble - Denial Mode?

I really like this X thread by John Mihaljevic (Chairman of MOI Global). He argues that the AI bulls are completely missing the point when they point to the ‘reasonable’ multiples hyperscalers & AI complex is trading at today (~30x P/E) compared to the multitude of tech giants at > 50x P/E during the dot-com to defend their …

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What are the charts telling us this month?

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#1 » Goehring & Rozencwajg - From Carry to Anti-Carry

Goehring & Rozencwajg are the best scientific + thematic thinkers within the natural resource space, and their quarterly commentaries are always an informative read. Whilst they are by default leaning on the perma-bull side of things as natural resource specialists (cue ‘everything looks like a nail t…

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Hi Apes!🍌

This is our monthly portfolio review, where we look at the performances of our respective portfolios and deep dives. For the new apes, we have the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 stocks)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 stocks)

  ---

We are off to a strong start across our portfolios, and we took advantage of the volatility in the last 2 weeks to reduce our cash holdings from ~8% at inception to being fully deployed heading into end of year! Volatility is not risk, it’s opportunity ;)

Portfolio Rules

1. There is no day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward over 1-3 years. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know this)
2. Maximum of 10% cash position in each portfolio
3. There will be tactical buys/sells (maybe a few times per month) and I send these through the chat as and when I make the changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

Read more

#1 » Michael Burry Started Writing on Substack and … You're Buying the Dip?

Financial history often reads like poetry because history doesn’t repeat but it sure rhymes. What better poem is there than seeing Michael J. Burry himself starting a newsletter again (the last time he did, he shorted Amazon 2 months before THE TOP of March 2000). The key takeawa…

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Hi Apes!🍌

I am very excited to launch 2 equity-only Indices that (fingers crossed) will beat the markets handily over a rolling 1-3 year timeframe. These are the:

• Banana Index: Best ideas within a global, unconstrained portfolio (15-25 names)

• Small Banana Index: Best ideas limited to global companies under US$10 billion in market capitalization (15-25 names)

Some quick rules:

1. There will not be any day-trading, leverage, or options in these portfolios. As with my investment philosophy, I seek the best ideas with favourable risk/reward on a 1-3 year investment horizon. Also, leverage is usually where portfolios go to die :/ (don’t ask me how I know)

2. Maximum of 10% cash position in portfolios

3. There will be tactical buys/sells on the edges (maybe a few times per month) and I will send these through the chat as and when I decide to make changes (remember to join the chat here if you haven’t)

4. Periodic performance updates on the indices and holdings will be done in our month end portfolio reviews so keep a look out for those!

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Hi Apes!

This is the first edition of The Weekly Wrap so here’s a quick intro of what it is and what to expect:

• I believe achieving tremendous success in investing over the long run requires a ton of mental flexibility - that means reading widely from all fields, being willing to seek out opposing views, challenging your assumptions, and updating your wor…

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This is the first single stock deep dive following on the back of my macro piece on Brazil and why it is the most asymmetric market in the world today. I also highlighted why the capital markets sector is the best risk/reward set-up within Brazil given the high probability rate normalization and what it means for equity flows. If you have not read the macro piece, do read it before this one! This is what I seek to do with all my investments - identifying a confluence in the macro and micro for high probability set-ups.

Introduction

Brasil Bolsa Balcao (otherwise known as B3) is Brazil’s stock exchange. This is a high-quality financial infrastructure monopoly situated in a 6-year bear market where investors do not see a reason to allocate to Brazil. The drastic relative valuation gap between B3 (13.5x fwd P/E) and other global exchanges (avg. 24x fwd p/e) despite demonstrating better capital discipline suggest that the market struggles to value assets at cyclical lows. Simply put, this is a very rare instance of a monopoly with low reinvestment needs possessing share cannibal characteristics (100% capital return via buybacks/dividends), whilst trading at 13.5x P/E on cyclically depressed earnings.

Business Overview

Brasil Bolsa Balcao was formed following the merger of the Sau Paulo Stock Exchange & the Commodities and Futures Exchange in 2008, after which they further vertically integrated through the acquisition of Cetip in 2017. Cetip is LATAM’s largest securities clearinghouse and crucially also a monopoly in Brazil’s securities registration business as the sole depository for all types of securities.

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Apologies fellow ape, I only want to appear in your inbox when I’m adding value…

I have received a few messages from you guys that payment is not going through for the subscriptions and it turns out my (very old) Stripe account ran into verification issues.

Thankfully, that’s all resolved now with my new Stripe that’s linked!

Also wanted to say a big thank you to those of you that support my publication, it really means a lot to me! :)

As a paid subscriber, you can expect:

• Weekly Wraps on what I found interesting (stock/industry/market/thoughts/what I read etc.)

• 1x Single Stock Deep Dive per month

• Monthly chart packs

• Month end portfolio review

Here’s a repository of my past write-ups:

1. Investment Philosophy: Mental Model of an Ape

2. Industry Analysis: China Real Estate Services

3. Single Stock Analysis: Binjiang Service (3316 HK)

4. Single Stock Analysis: Indocement (INTP IJ)

5. Single Stock Analysis: Daqo New Energy (DQ US)

6. Market Analysis: Buy Brazil. I Am

7. Monthly Chart Pack: Ape with Crayons - October 2025

Cheers,

Taro Sakamoto