Thematic Equity Baskets
Primers and Equity Baskets for CitriniResearch’s Equity Portfolio
Primary Themes:
Our current primary equity themes for 2025 are
Airlines
Artificial Intelligence
US Fiscal Policy
Natural Gas
Medtech & Healthcare
Chinese Economic Stimulus
Citrini Small and Mid-Cap Picks
Interconnects 101
Payments
Telecom’s Supply Chain Resurgence
GLP-1s
If you are a new paid subscriber, I really recommend getting up to speed on all of these by reading these primers (which are designed to stay relevant, as our themes are expected to play out over years). It makes Citrini sad when you pay him for insights and then ask stupid questions that have already been answered by exceedingly in-depth primers. And we don’t want to make Citrini sad, right? …right?
US Fiscal Primacy
Preface “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” -Milton Friedman Thesis and Objective: We have entered a new fiscal and geostrategic regime that will be markedly different than the previous decade and see government spending exercising a persistently outsized role in corporate profit trends. The pandemic accelerated powerful fiscal and economic shifts already underway, heralding a new era that could bring meaningful change to both the micro and macroeconomic landscape.
Artificial Intelligence: Global Equity Beneficiaries
Executive Summary Objective Create a basket of international equities to generate selection alpha and outperform both the broader equity market, and other AI focused baskets, focused on capturing the AI/ML & accelerated computing paradigm shift utilizing a valuation sensitive selection process and a triphasic framework for the technological paradigm of artificial intelligence, accelerated computing and robotics/automation.
Upgrading from Overweight: The Effects of GLP-1 Drugs on the Investment Landscape
Upgrading from Overweight: The Effects of GLP-1 Drugs on the Investment Landscape The Questions: GLP-1 Drugs and Obesity If you haven’t, please read my article on Thematic Investing & Megatrends here fi…
Analytical Frameworks: Evaluating Banks & Insurers
Preface and Objective: Financial Frameworks When looking at the investable universe of equities, it’s helpful for most investors to separate them into financials and non-financial corporations. While almost all equities tend to behave the same and are more correlated to each other than other assets, financials are fundamentally different businesses than others. Many investors caution against including utilities and financials in a longer term portfolio because, although they are distinctly different they share one common thread:
China at the Crossroads
Preface This is the first of a series called A-Frames, essentially primers on macro situations that cover both bear & bull cases, context, a framework for synthesizing new ideas based on developments and, of course, a list of plays I think are asymmetric.
Election 2024: Investment Implications & Preparations
This article provides two potential baskets to play a second Trump vs. Biden election as well as the results. The purpose is to highlight risks, both upside and downside, in both equities and macro. It’s quite early on, but tomorrow is Super Tuesday and we will be hearing a lot more about this - and likely seeing a lot more implications on the way our portfolios move. If we’re doing groundhog day, it’s at least good to be prepared.
High Quality H2O
High-Quality H2O Thematic Primer: Water’s Secular Tailwinds In the realm of thematic equity, water has long been discussed as a thesis that seems somewhat obvious but regularly fails to consistently impress on the basis of outperformance.
Interconnects 101
We take a deep dive into some of the leading edge technologies and companies connecting high performance components within the data center. Within this primer, we explore the "what," "why," and "how" of connecting chips and computers to each other to create the machines that breath life into modern AI/ML models.
Healthcare’s Cyclical Inflection
With the yen carry trade putting AI on life support for now, we’re examining an industry that has weathered multiple storms over the last few years and suffered due to the crowding in of capital into momentum sectors.
Yearly Outlook & State of the Themes Updates
Every year at the end of the year we do a “Twenty-something Trades for Twenty-Twenty-Something” (i.e. 25 Trades for 2025).
These include baskets we may or may not put on during the year, a thematic review and outlook and other trade ideas as well as a risk assessment to our current portfolio and a brief (and mostly useless, as most of them tend to be) macroeconomic outlook.
I highly recommend revisiting this article throughout the year whenever you may be struggling for ideas or have recently raised cash and are looking for new positions to deploy into.
This is typically the most broad and exhaustive market review we do. You can read it here:
Thematic Expansion Primers
We have delved into various themes that we are not currently allocated to:
AI Losers (Short Only & Long/Short Basket) and
Cybersecurity Long/Short
Less Deus, More Machina
Preface As discussed in my piece on how to play AI beneficiaries (which you should read first here), I laid out the case that the best risk reward in my triphasic model came in the form of data center…
OKTA Short & Cybersecurity Risk Frameworks
On October 20, 2023, a significant breach transpired within the infrastructure of Okta, a pivotal entity in the domain of identity and access management (IAM). This intrusion was orchestrated through a compromise of Okta's customer support unit, utilizing a stolen credential to gain unauthorized access to the support case management system. The accessed data encompassed files containing customer cookies and session tokens, which are integral components for user authentication and session management, and allowed the attacker to steal session cookies belonging to Okta’s customers who requested assistance through the support platform.
You can read my general approach to thematic equity investing here:
Thematic Investing and Mega Trends
What is a “megatrend”? I did not get to explain the concept of how I look at thematic investing in my first two pieces, so I’m using this as an opportunity to do so. A couple months ago, I mentioned on Twitter what I thought were the current themes with potential to become megatrends for the 2020s: