Thomas Chua (Steady Compounding)
Fundamental investor who posts earnings analyses and explicitly references reading and updating from earnings call transcripts; shares takeaways and sector comps.
Airline Spending Surges 9% as Travel Bookings Hit Record
Travel spending remains strong: “The other thing I think that was concerning to some people in the first quarter was airline spending and what we were seeing there. And I can tell you, in April, we had 9% airline growth. So people are on planes, they’re flying. We have record travel bookings in the first quarter.” AMEX CEO Stephen Squeri
Release Fear, Accelerate Growth by Loosening Your Grip
Fear of failure and pressure to succeed leave most people driving with the brakes on. They're moving, but using a fraction of what they're capable of. Loosen the grip. Explore. Iterate. Your work and skills compounds faster when you stop fighting yourself.
Own a Resilient Business, Not Speculative Stock Rentals
"Time is more wisely spent locating and owning a business that has the ability to profit in all economic environments than by renting a group of stocks that do well only if a guess about the economy happens to be...
Paycom's Optimistic Outlook Masks $675M Debt‑driven Buyback
Every quarter, the same opening lines from Paycom's CEO: "Sales are ramping." "We serve 5% of TAM." "Bookings inflection coming later in the year." In Q1, Paycom took on $675M of debt to retire 15% of its shares. What it means ($): https://steadycompounding.com/investing/paycom-q1-2026/
When Business Thrives, Choose Investment over Profit Harvesting
“When your business is behaving like this, we believe the right response is not to harvest — it is to invest.” Mercado Libre Q1 2026 Shareholder Letter
MELI Defies Size‑Related Slowdown with 49% Growth
MELI grew 49% YoY at $30B+ revenue. They didn't receive the memo that size is usually a drag on growth rates. Note: part of it is FX, but still impressive
Agentic AI Drives CPU Demand, Boosting Graviton Relevance
Interesting nugget from Amazon's quarter on CPUs. In training, you needed maybe 1 CPU per 8 GPUs. Agentic workloads might push that closer to 1:1. Suddenly, Graviton matters a lot more.
Meta's AI Spend Isn’t Pure Speculation, Says Analyst
Wrote up Meta's Q1. The market is treating all of the AI capex as one big speculative bet. Most of it isn't, and I think that's where the disconnect is. https://www.steadycompounding.com/investing/meta-q1-2026/
Wingstop Suffers Third Consecutive Sales Decline, 8.7% Drop
Wingstop's domestic same-store sales just dropped 8.7%. Worst quarter ever. Three straight quarters of declines. They couldn't grow even during NBA and NFL season. What's happening?
Research Hunts Truth; Validation Shields Ego
The difference between research and collecting validation: Research is hunting for the truth, whether it goes for or against your position. Validation is filtering for takes that confirm what you already believe. One protects your portfolio. The other protects your ego.
Leadership Quality Beats Numbers Every Time
On the importance of studying management quality > just numbers: "Like his father, Shelby studied history and learned the rudiments of accounting, balance sheet diving, and Security Analysis 101 on the side. Like his father, he valued the intangibles of corporate...
Growth‑first Strategy Stalls Both Users and Revenue
Last quarter, the CEO mentioned: “we’ve decided to prioritize user growth over monetization.” Not a good trend to see both continue to decelerate.
Relying Solely on Personal Experience Breeds Misery
"My second prescription for misery is to learn everything you possibly can from your own experience, minimizing what you learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead. This prescription is a sureshot producer of misery...
Netflix Keeps Discipline Amid $2.8B Fee and Board Exit
Netflix Q1 2026: discipline tested, discipline held. $2.8B termination fee. Engagement metric reframe. Reed Hastings exits the board. My breakdown: https://www.steadycompounding.com/investing/netflix-q1-2026/
Balance Aggression and Defense to Optimize Portfolio Positioning
"The greatest way to optimize the positioning of a portfolio at a given point in time is through deciding what balance it should strike between aggressiveness and defensiveness." Howard Marks