Yannis Stamatopoulos

Owning tiny bits of quality businesses.

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

My investing checklist - Do’s and Dont’s

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

Eddie gave us hints on this during the last call;

👉 “I think, overall in the next 2 to 3 years, we can expect to see a significantly higher gross margin for Alibaba Cloud, and we can expect to start to see that in the next 1 to 2 quarters.”

3 specific drivers cited:

1.Pricing power: Server replacement costs have more than doubled year-on-year, giving Alibaba pricing leverage with both new and existing customers

2.MaaS mix: “Inherently, MaaS represents a much higher level of gross margin than IaaS”

3.T-Head chips: Continued scale-up of proprietary chips contributing to better gross margin.

And my favourite part from the call 👇

“What we’re doing today is investing capital to build 2 factories, if you like. The first we can call the AI training factory. The second, we can call the inferencing factory… the pathway to achieving a solid return on investment in those factories, in those areas, is very clear… today, there isn’t a single card on our service that is idle. So we see the ROI on this investment in the next 3- to 5-year period as being extremely clear.”

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

Will Danoff is retiring from Fidelity Contrafund this year.

Joseph Shaposhnik Portfolio Manager of the Rainwater Equity ETF who worked with him at Fidelity reflects on lessons from his legendary mentor.

'For the industry, it's the end of an era; for me, it's the retirement of a mentor who taught me a great deal about investing. I had the privilege of working with Will for a few years covering semis and software. He didn't just beat the market by a mile in his 30 year career; he did it with a level of humility and intensity that is rare in this industry.

I learned a number of lessons from working with him that I’d like to share with you, because many of these directly influence how we think about investing today – and how we’ve built the portfolio to navigate an uncertain world with discipline, patience, and a long-term focus.

- The first: investing is a solemn responsibility. Will kept a letter on his wall from an investor who was saving for
their newborn's college education, and it was a daily reminder to him and to all of us as analysts who walked into his office that our work isn't just about tickers and companies and the economy – it has a real-world impact on people. We spend a lot of time thinking about that, and for us at Rainwater, investing on behalf of so many people is a responsibility that we take very seriously.

- The second lesson that I learned from Will is what he called betting with billionaires. It was a strategy that he
used in which he would seek out successful leaders and double down on them and essentially bet on proven
winners repeatedly. So if he had invested with somebody at the IPO 20 years ago and had done well with that person and they launched another business and brought it public, he would bet with them again and again and again. I think he believed that successful managers and successful leaders were likely to be successful again.

- The next: flexibility and responsiveness to new data. Will was willing to change his mind quickly if new facts
contradicted his original thesis. He never let his ego or the last investment that he made get in the way of making the right decision. If new data arouse or an unexpected change to a company’s management team was announced he rapidly reevaluated the investment.

- Lastly, maintaining a high level of intensity, curiosity and a focus on lifelong learning. Will often met with 10 to 11 companies a day. He was always searching for the great management team, the business that was a great business that was getting better, rather than just investing in cheap stocks that were cyclical where you kind of hope for a turnaround. So he was relentless in his intensity, relentless about meeting many companies.

Will was a learning machine. I remember sitting with him at one of the Berkshire Hathaway meetings years ago, and he had this yellow legal pad out and he took notes for hours. I'll never forget, he tore the paper off after every page and put it into another notebook. He was just a learning machine. I remember meeting with him a couple years ago and talking about how he was seeking to get better, and I remember him talking to me about how he is watching Warren Buffett's lectures on YouTube. This is Will Danoff, one of the greatest investors of our time – he was still working on learning. Being a consistent and lifelong learner was instrumental to his growth and success'.

Source: Rainwater Equity ETF Q1 2026 Shareholder Letter

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

❤️

Buffett disciple Guy Spier’s rare cancer changed what he values most https://t.co/YlqQaKreL4 via @YouTube

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

And then we told them that revenue will 💯 x by 2030 … $gs

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Goldman Sachs reportedly forecasts SpaceX’s AI division revenue will grow 9,900% within four years, reaching $322,000,000,000.00 by 2030.

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

My finest hour

Fortinet $ftnt

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

Raising whatever cash I can to buy $ftnt Fortinet and make it a full position. Intend to hold it for many many years. Liquidated Vodafone and the $bats $bti quarterly dividend that just hit my account.

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@e_pixelventure PDD was overearning the same way that Alibaba was in the past. Their capital light model does not look sustainable and the way they treat suppliers has now attracted regulatory scruitiny (reportedly there was a fist fight 😆) . Margins should be on their way down from here …

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

The secular forces in 🇨🇳 e-commerce are on our side …

Alibaba $baba Pinduoduo $ppd JD $jd

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

$baba ‘The secular forces in e-commerce is that in China there is a 30% penetration of e-commerce to total retail. Over the next 5 years this penetration will go to 40% and even higher.’ Joe Tsai

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@A76499780 Will keep going up !

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

As Druck said it best. ‘ never invest in the present Instead visualize what the world and corporate earnings will look like 18 to 24 months from now,

Eddie Wu has set an ambitious Cloud AI revenue goal to reach $ 💯 bn 2030 with the EBITA margin reaching 20%+ as mix shifts to higher-margin AI/public cloud.

That would be a 2nd growth and profit engine, even bigger than 🇨🇳 e-commerce with Qwen and the T-head AI cheaps being great enablers.

You either believe this or not and place your chips accordingly …

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@investingichina Why is that ? And why don’t they want to list in 🇭🇰 or return capital via share buybacks you reckon?

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

Pinduoduo $PDD Scenario Analysis and IRR Decomposition - 3 Year View.

The core debate has now shifted from ''cheap compounder'' to “temporary investment reset versus permanent margin impairment.”

And as usual , management's anti-guidance philosophy is far from reassuring:

''For a considerable period of time, we may be at a competitive disadvantage to our competitors and this will potentially be accompanied by financial pressures such as slower revenue growth''.

🤔🤔

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

Kainos $knos.l 💪

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@TSOH_Investing @goodinvestingc ‘The guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is’

Charlie Munger - Acquired podcast

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@NapoleonChagnon @SwissKnifeInv I’m also in the coffee can camp. Do not intend to sell anything , only add. Buying the right stock at the right valuation becomes super important and helps you focus

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

At the peak of the position (end of Q3 2020 / September 30, 2020), Micron Technology $MU represented 41.09% of Himalaya Capital Management’s total 13F portfolio.

In Q2 2023, Li Lu fully exited the position at an average price of ~$64.22.

Today $mu trades at $950. Li lu’s position would be worth $ 10,902,696,850.

The great Li lu left approximately $10.19 billion on the table just on Micron, a tip from Pabrai who also made the same costly mistake.

Selling your winners early is the biggest mistake in investing. Geniuses are not immune.

[FluentInQuality @FluentInQuality]

"The single most important thing you can do as an investor is to wait for the fat pitch — and then bet big."

— Li Lu

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@SteadyCompound I will order this. Best of luck 🤞 Thomas

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

☕️can Portfolio Update - May 2026

9 bagger 🏆: Metlen
2 baggers 🥇: Fortinet, Semi ETF

-1.35% YTD

“The true measure of wealth in life is the people you love and your friends.”

Sen Mitt Romney

$baba $payc $bats $bti $prx.as $tcehy $evo.st $evo $adyen $pdd $mytil.at $mtln.l $eden.pa $ftnt $mele $bidu $four $knos.l $erf.pa

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@ArneUlland

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@ArneUlland This just in 👇

https://t.co/hQRMpEvxlm

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@TihoBrkan Would not want to live anywhere else

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@sadchineseman For shopping?🛍️

[Yannis Stamatopoulos @Arkalos77]

@sadchineseman I saw that DAUs have gone down. What has changed?