The Scarcity Trade The Scarcity Trade
Independent equity research · NYC

The bottleneck trade.

I find underfollowed Taiwan / Korea / Japan small-cap dislocations, semis, holdco/NAV, and special situations, before the activists or the consensus do.

Current idea · gated

A holdco at ~20% of NAV, with three catalysts to close it.

~20% price / NAV3 catalysts identifiedName ████
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Who

Dheeraj Namburu, independent analyst, NYC. Software engineer; Brown (Econ + CS); researching equities since 2022. LinkedIn · X · GitHub

What you get

1–2 actionable Asia small-cap ideas / month: local filings, NAV/SOTP, catalysts, and bear/base/bull with MOIC.

The edge

An AI pipeline I built screens ~68,900 global small-caps into a ranked watchlist; I underwrite the survivors by hand.

Provably early: published 2316.TW on May 22 → Palliser & Metrica filed activist plans 3 weeks later.
Timestamped · publicly verifiable

I was demonstrably first.

Not a backtest. A public, dated paper trail. The clearest example: I published the 2316.TW value-unlock thesis, and the activists showed up weeks later.

May 22, 2026
Published 2316.TW (WUS Printed Circuit), a Taiwan holdco trading at ~25% of its listed-stake NAV in the Shenzhen AI-PCB leader 002463.SZ. Holdco / NAV
Jun 10–15
Activists arrived on the same thesis: Palliser Capital (~4%) filed a "WUS Value Enhancement Plan"; Metrica Partners (~1%) sent a board letter, ~3 weeks after my post. Validated
First on X
Mirae Corp (025560.KS), first tweet anywhere on a Korean ATE semiconductor test-handler the market still misfiles as auto/defense. Near-zero prior English coverage. Original sourcing
Current ideas · gated

More live setups, names shared on a call.

Current idea 2 · gated

~5× forward earnings, comps near 60×

A profitable, underfollowed name trading at roughly 5× forward earnings while its closest comps trade closer to 60×, a multiple gap I expect to compress.

Name████ withheld
Forward P/E~5×
Comps trade at~60×
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Always 2–3 live setups

Beyond the names teased here, I'm usually tracking a couple more underfollowed dislocations. Get the names and the full work on a 15-minute call.

Book a 15-min call
Selected published work
See the full archive on Substack ↗
The mandate

Differentiated sourcing, cleanly underwritten.

Local-language filings, forward order-book reconstruction, comparable valuation, catalyst mapping, and bear/base/bull price targets with MOIC, on names that don't yet show up on English screens.

1–2

Actionable ideas / month

Underfollowed Asia small-cap dislocations with a clear catalyst path, for a small number of funds.

The niche

Semiconductors & AI supply chain (HBM, PCB, semicap, test/handler), holdco/NAV discounts, preferred/common gaps, restructuring, event-driven & activist setups.

Clean & auditable

Every thesis carries source provenance. General, impersonal published work; bespoke research for a select few. For institutional discussion only.

The screening engine
~68,900

global small-caps, triaged by AI, then underwritten by hand.

I built an autonomous pipeline that generates structured fundamental theses across ~68,900 unique small/micro-caps in ~156 countries, distilled into a ranked top-100 watchlist. The survivors get deep human work; the watchlist is where the bottlenecks surface.

The watchlist below is AI-generated triage: informational only, not investment advice, and the starting point for human diligence rather than conviction calls. Figures are model-scraped and need verification.

View the AI watchlist →
Stay close to the work

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New theses and the occasional gated setup, sent as I publish. Or grab a full sample thesis to judge the work first.

Download a sample thesis (2316.TW) →
Opening a few first-look slots this quarter

Worth fifteen minutes?

dheeraj@scarcitytrade.com