Independent equity research
Mispriced businesses, proven in public.
A live book of US mid-cap positions — every name reasoned in a cited memo, every claim traced to the filing that proves it, every position kept on a public track record for good.
The Probative is a paid equity-research service on US mid-cap public equity in the $1 to $10 billion band. We keep a live book of long positions: every claim behind them sourced to a specific paragraph in an SEC filing, every position decided by a written rule rather than an opinion, and every name kept on a public track record from the day we buy it, edited by no one.
The record is public — so you can watch it work before you pay a dollar. What stays with Members is the part a track record can never give you: each new buy as it happens, how much to size it, and the judgment to keep holding — or to sell — through every quarter that follows.
New buys
Only when earned · ~5–10/yr
Domain
US Mid-Cap, $1B–$10B
Benchmark
Russell Mid (IWR)
Patient capital,
written down.
The Probative is the public record of how we think about businesses. We write to subscribers the way we write to ourselves — with our reasoning on the page, our citations linked, and our verdicts produced by a rule we publish.
We look for cheap, durable, mid-cap businesses where the discount is temporary rather than permanent. The hardest part of value investing is not finding cheap stocks; it is telling apart a temporary discount from a permanent one. Almost every value-trap blow-up reduces to two failure modes — secular decline (the business is structurally shrinking) or peak earnings (a cyclical at the top of its cycle). The bulk of our analytical work is on disqualifying those, one name at a time.
We are not in the business of trading the next quarter. We are in the business of being right over years, and being checkable while we wait.
Five names.
All BUY.
Probative opens with five long positions in US mid-cap public equity. Each is the output of the same disciplined process — filings-grounded, citation-backed, decided by a written rule rather than an opinion.
Four things,
nothing more.
I · THE BUY — WHEN IT'S EARNED
A new name only when one clears the bar — roughly five to ten a year, never on a schedule. Each arrives as a full memo: the thesis, the fair-value bridge, the risks that would prove it wrong, and a suggested position size. We do not publish to fill a calendar.
II · THE LIVE LEDGER
Every position we hold, the date opened, entry price, current return, distance to fair value. Updated through the trading day. Visible to Members at any hour.
III · CONTINUOUS MONITORING
The work that never stops: every open position re-checked as each new filing lands — does the thesis still hold? — the case reassessed, and the sell signal sent the day a written exit rule fires. Buying well is the easy half; holding well through the drops is the part you are paying for.
IV · THE PUBLIC TRACK RECORD
Every position we hold lives on a public page from the day it opens, with realized return versus the Russell Mid-Cap benchmark — winners and losers alike. We never edit it and we never quietly drop a name. The track record is the receipts.
How a name
earns its verdict.
Filings only.
Every claim about a company comes from a specific paragraph in a specific government-filed document — 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, DEF 14A, XBRL financials. We do not rely on press releases, earnings-call transcripts, analyst opinion, or any claim we cannot trace to a filing.
Cite the source.
Every claim we make traces to a specific government-filed document — the 10-K, the 10-Q, an 8-K, the proxy. Each memo closes with the filings it stands on. A claim without provenance is not a claim — it is an opinion, and we do not publish opinions as facts.
Hold to a rule.
We decide each name against a rule we wrote down before we saw the company, and we follow it whether we like the answer or not. When the rule says BUY, we open the position. When it says PASS, we pass — even on a name we like.
Held in public.
Every position appears in the public track record the day it opens — winners and losers alike, nothing quietly dropped. We do not edit it; we do not delete from it. You can audit the whole record before you trust a word of it.
Read the system
before you pay.
A finance newsletter that claims to have a “system” is one of the most common things in the world. A finance newsletter that publishes its system in detail before asking for a dollar is rare. We are doing the rare thing.
The paper lays out what we believe and what we have bound ourselves to: the two commitments — filings only, and hold to a rule — the things we will never do, and how the public record works. It is the philosophy, in plain English. What it deliberately leaves out is the machinery: the calibrations, formulas, thresholds, and scoring that turn a filing into a verdict. That part stays ours.
Read it before subscribing. Audit the system. Decide for yourself whether it is real.
How we make calls. The system, in plain English.
A short paper. Free PDF. No signup required.
Read the paper →Become a Member.
The same work whichever you pick: every new buy, the live ledger, continuous monitoring, the cited memos. The tiers differ only in billing, and each carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Every tier:new buys as they're earned·the live ledger·continuous monitoring·same-day sell signals·cited memos + full archive
Cancel anytime
Billed yearly