VJ Distilled: Ideas to Watch (4th May 2026)
Four ideas worth putting on your radar - commodity volatility beneficiary, a capital pivot the market hasn't priced, an AI panic selloff and a cheap CEE banking consolidator
Each issue I highlight a few pitches and ideas from fund letters, blog posts and presentations that caught my eye. I go through a lot of material and filter for what I think is worth paying attention to. I read thousands of investment idea pitches every year and thought I would share what I find interesting with a wider audience.
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Full credit goes to the original authors. I’m just surfacing what I found interesting.
1. Marex Group | MRX US | $51.85 | $3.7bn Mkt Cap
Idea Source | @Kuppy | pracap.com
Note Q1 2026 results are due on Wednesday 6th of May.
The pitch (as of April 22nd, 2026):
Marex is a mid-market commodity broker providing clearing, execution and hedging to trading houses, producers and hedge funds across energy, agriculture and metals. Harris Kupperman (Kuppy) of Praetorian Capital dedicated a large portion of his Q1 2026 letter to the thesis. Kuppy believes commodity volatility is structural in a more fragmented world, and that mid-market commodity firms increasingly need to hedge risks they didn’t have to worry about before. He sees Marex taking share from bulge-bracket firms that are pulling back from the segment due to compliance costs and capital requirements. Revenue grew 27% in 2025, ROE was 27.6%. Looking towards 2027, Kuppy sets his fair value at $120 per share versus $52 today, at roughly 9x his 2027 earnings estimate.
Value Junkie View:
I have been a long-time reader of Kuppy, stretching back to the Adventures in Capitalism days to the present day through his quarterly letter. Kuppy is direct and open in his writing about his ideas. Praetorian focus mainly on themes related to inflation with holdings in land, energy, metals, refiners and select idiosyncratic opportunities like Marex. Q1 results for Marex are out on Wednesday morning, one to watch this week.
Marex appears to be set up well to continue taking share both organically and via M&A in a market that is growing due to increased external volatility. With clear incentives for executives to hedge out risks at the corporate level, Marex is positioned to continue benefitting from these trends. The stock has been on a good run YTD, up from $38 to $52 at the time of writing which would give me pause for thought not knowing a whole lot about the company. On the other hand, Kuppy points out that despite the appreciation, Marex trades at just high-single digit 2027e EPS with strong earnings growth and high returns on equity, while maintaining healthy levels of investment in their business. Sounds like there continues to be plenty of upside here, making MRX one to watch.
2. Virtu Financial | VIRT US | $49.00 | $7.6bn Mkt Cap
Idea Source | east72.com.au | @East72Dynasty | Andrew Brown- X
The pitch (as of 31st March 2026):
Virtu is the only publicly listed pure-play liquidity provider in the US, a technology-driven market maker operating across equities, ETFs, fixed income and currencies. Andrew Brown of East 72 Dynasty Trust is a high-quality writer and drew on a presentation he gave at Value Spain in Madrid in March for this quarterly letter. Brown argues that US equity volumes have more than doubled from 7 billion shares a day in 2014 to over 20 billion today, driven by market democratisation via Robinhood and Interactive Brokers, the explosion of ETFs (now around 4,500 listed) and the shift to off-exchange trading which first crossed 50% of total US equity volume in November 2024. His more specific thesis is about a capital pivot. Brown points out that Virtu has paid away over $4 billion since 2017 in dividends and buybacks while competitors Citadel and Jane Street aggressively retained and deployed capital. From mid-2025, Brown believes Virtu changed course under new CEO Aaron Simons, with total deployed capital rising from around $3.8 billion to $5.1 billion by year end. Q1 2026 confirmed his view: adjusted EPS of $2.24 versus consensus of $1.25. Brown believes the stock at roughly 7x trailing earnings is pricing in a cyclical peak that he does not think is coming, and he puts his target at $6.75 EPS on a sustained basis once the capital deployment beds in.
Value Junkie View:
Andrew Brown is an investor whose letters I always pay attention to. He is a patient, concentrated investor who tends to own businesses where controlling shareholders are aligned with minority investors. He has written about Virtu across multiple quarterly letters, initially at $17 in September 2023.
I always pay attention to a change in capital allocation strategy, in Virtu’s case retaining more earnings which should enable management to grow Adjusted Net Trading Income (ANTI) while maintaining high returns on capital. The capital pivot story is the more interesting part of the thesis for me rather than the pure volatility trade. Q1 printed almost exactly as Brown predicted when consensus was sitting 78% lower, which gives the thesis credibility and also highlights how sell-side have been behind on Virtu. Given I am relatively new to the Virtu story, I would be interested to learn more about whether additional capital can actually recover market share that has drifted to Citadel and Jane Street, both of which are better capitalised private businesses with no pressure to ever return capital but Q1 earnings last week may be the first step towards Virtu proving that they can be more competitive. The stock is at $49, slightly below the level of $50.89 when the East 72 letter was published, which at least means it has not run away from readers since then.
3. IWG plc | IWG LN | 185p | £1.8bn Mkt Cap
Idea Source | @YaronNaymark | 1maincapital.com
The pitch (as of April 2026):
IWG is the world’s largest flexible workspace operator, running Regus, Spaces, HQ and other brands across 120 plus countries. In February 2026 the stock fell over 25% after Citrini Research published a viral Substack post imagining an AI-driven economic collapse scenario. Markets sold off white-collar adjacent businesses as if the scenario was a forecast rather than a hypothetical exercise. Yaron Naymark of 1 Main Capital believes the market read this completely backwards. He argues AI drives startup formation and makes enterprises reluctant to commit to long-term office leases, which increases demand for IWG’s flexible model. He also argues that AI-driven office vacancies create more building owners willing to partner with IWG under its managed partnership model, where IWG operates the space for roughly 15% of revenues and takes on zero capex. Naymark points to the full year 2025 results as evidence the business is not in distress: system-wide revenue of $4.5 billion, EBITDA of $531 million, free cash flow up 60% to $162 million, with net debt declining. He believes the stock trades at under 3x 2030 estimated free cash flow if management’s £1 billion EBITDA target is achieved.
Value Junkie View:
Yaron Naymark founded 1 Main Capital in 2018 and has compounded at 20.8% net annualised since inception. He runs a concentrated portfolio focused on high-quality businesses with long reinvestment runways. In terms of style and investment holdings, Yaron is an investor I have had a lot of overlap with over the years.
He is among a number of investors who have followed IWG for a number of years and are bullish. I have done a little bit of work on IWG in the past and was intrigued. I never got around to completing my work on it or getting to a place of conviction. It is definitely true that IWG is a very controversial stock with bulls and bears with strong opinions on both sides. I would want to do a lot more work on understanding the business model transition, assessing its quality, their leases and bridging actual results to IWG’s targets in more detail.
This is a business model transformation that is playing out over the coming years as they move towards this capital light strategy. If they deliver their plans, IWG is potentially a very cheap stock with huge potential upside. On the flip side, I have spoken with bears who question the credibility of management as well as the quality of the business model. A Substack post causing a 25% decline in a business reporting record free cash flow is a setup worth paying attention to, especially in a company that is buying back shares in the open market.
4. Raiffeisen Bank International | RBI AV | €45 | €14.8bn Mkt Cap
Idea Source | @UV_Shares | undervalued-shares.com
Note: Q1 2026 results are due on Tuesday 5th May.
Note: Source article is behind a paywall at Undervalued Shares.
The pitch (as of April 2026):
RBI is an Austrian bank operating across Central and Eastern Europe with 17.9 million customers across 11 markets. The Russian subsidiary has been the overhang keeping the stock cheap for years. Swen Lorenz of Undervalued Shares first wrote about RBI when the stock was €13 and has continued to follow it closely. He believes the Russia overhang is resolving and that the market is still not pricing the core CEE franchise correctly. Swen argues that stripped of Russia, the core business trades at roughly 5.5x 2027 estimated earnings and 0.6x book value, versus the average European bank at c.9x PE. He also points to active capital deployment as a sign of management confidence: a voluntary takeover bid for Addiko Bank and the acquisition of Garanti BBVA Romania both announced in recent months, positioning RBI as the consolidator of a fragmented banking landscape in CEE as Western European banks retreat. Swen sees Ukraine reconstruction as additional optionality on top of what he already considers a cheap core franchise. RBI has more than tripled since he first covered it and he still considers it one of the best proxies for investing in the CEE region.
Value Junkie View:
Swen Lorenz has over 30 years of investing experience and runs Undervalued Shares, a research service focused on finding opportunities that mainstream investors overlook. He has a strong track record of finding early-stage situations in less-followed markets. His original RBI call at €13 was specific and ran counter to consensus at the time.
I like that RBI is consolidating the market by making accretive acquisitions in CEE. Q1 results out tomorrow give an immediate read on the core business. What I would want to understand better is the governance questions, actual Russia exit timeline, what residual regulatory and legal exposure looks like post-exit, and whether the CEE re-rating happens on its own or needs a specific Ukraine catalyst to get there. Worth flagging that the Russia situation is genuinely complicated and this is not a clean story. Overall, one of the strongest banking franchises in an outperforming CEE banking market with M&A consolidation opportunities at 5.5x looks interesting especially with potential upside optionality from an exit of their Russian subsidiary.
Note: This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. I may hold positions in securities mentioned. Always do your own research before making any investment decision.
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