Financial Archaeology: Deep Research and Uncommon Insights with Gwen Hofmeyr, Maiden Financial
Summary
Europe Focus: The guest highlights Europe as the most compelling hunting ground right now, citing attractive valuations, strong rule of law, and many owner-operated companies.
Industrials & Lagging Tech: She is concentrating on European industrials and lagging edge technologies, where complexity and niche positioning can create mispriced opportunities.
Key Company: Melexis (MELE), a Belgian automotive sensor designer, is discussed in depth as a dominant niche player with high ROE and focus on magnetic latch, switch, and position sensors.
Semiconductors: Detailed analysis of analog and automotive sensors underpins a positive view on specialized semiconductor businesses with defensible niches.
Owner-Operators: Preference for owner-operated structures due to stronger economics and alignment; this focus is especially relevant in financials and European small/mid caps.
Research Edge: A “financial archaeology” process tests market share via product catalogs, platform and geospatial analysis, and unit-level data to build owner-level conviction.
AI Context: AI currently increases the value of deep, original human research rather than replacing it, helping differentiate substantive work from generic outputs.
Risk/Setup: Favors heads-I-win, tails-I-win-more setups, strong balance sheets, capital-cycle awareness, and preparing ahead so opportunities can be seized quickly.
Transcript
This podcast is forformational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities. SNN network, SNN Inc. and the Plano Microcap podcast and the representatives are not licensed brokers, broker dealers, market makers, investment bankers, investment adviserss, analysts, or underwriters. We do not recommend any companies [music] discussed. We may buy and sell securities in any company mentioned and make profit in the event those securities rise in value. We recommend you consult with a professional investment advisor, broker, or legal counsel before purchasing or selling any securities referenced in this podcast. Welcome to the Planet Microap podcast. I'm your host, Robert Craft. Thank you all so much for tuning in and for the continued support. If you like what you hear on the Planet Microap podcast, please take a moment to rate us five stars on Spotify or Apple podcast. It really helps more folks to discover the show and join in on the micro cap investing community. Our next conference, Planet Micro Cap Las Vegas 2026 is happening June 16 through 18, 2026 at the Bellagio Resort and Casino. This is the premier event for micro cap investors, issuers, and industry professionals. And you're not going to want to miss it. Visit planet microcapshow showcase.com for updates and to reserve your spot. See you in Vegas. Now, my guest on the show today is Gwen Hoffmire, founder and senior analyst at Maiden Financial. In this episode, Gwen walks us through her unique research methodology, which she refers to as financial archaeology. This is a process built around extremely deep, original investigative work designed to uncover uncommon information, insights that simply aren't available in typical company reports or mainstream research. We discuss how Gwyn routinely spends 200 to 600 hours analyzing a single company, validating market share by breaking down thousands of individual products and constructing an understanding of a business that is entirely independent of management narrative and sellside opinion. We also talk about how this approach leads to owner level conviction and why that conviction matters so much in the micro cap universe where volatility is high and broad consensus is often absent. Gwen also shares why some of the most compelling opportunities she finds today are in Europe, particularly in industrial and lagging edge technology companies and how AI is actually increasing the value of deep human research, not replacing it. So, thank you again for tuning in to the Planet Microap podcast and please enjoy my conversation with Gwen Hoffm. Gwen, thank you for joining me today. How you doing? >> Thank you for having me. It's another sunny day in Toronto, so I can't complain. >> Absolutely. No, it's great to have you. I mean, look, I I I reached out because for two reasons. One, you'd register for our event and, you know, I'm like, "All right, who what's going on? Made of Financial a research thing. What's going on?" And then, you know, of course, I do a quick Google and you see you're on one of my favorite shows, Value After Hours. I'm like, "Oh, well, we got to have going on here." And so, I I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and insights on here. >> Of course. >> Very cool. So, love to my first question that I ask everybody on here, you know, I'd love to get your background. you know, when what got you started on your investing journey and then maybe also catch us up to then the founding of Maiden Financial. >> Okay, that's a long story. Um, I'll try to keep it brief. So, I guess you would have to go back to 2017. I was in my final year of political science. So, I'm a political scientist by training. Um, and I was um just in a state of despair. I didn't want to be a policy analyst. I didn't want to be a lawyer. Um, and I certainly didn't want to work for the government. So, I was kind of in this existential area period of my life where I kind of needed a change. And one of, I guess, the industries that have always stood out to me, just my great-grandfather, FH Deacon, um, had a board on the Toronto Stock Exchange at one point. There's a lot of kind of family history in Canadian markets with my family. So, I went down to my local used bookstore, picked up one up on Wall Street. Um, and those first pages, it felt like waking up for the first time. So, in that first year, gosh, I read three dozen books, probably some of them five, six times over, started a blog, wrote a book um called The Half Wick Crustation on all the mistakes that I made during my first year investing. Um, yeah, >> keep going. I'm like enthralled. I'm just I'm just like sorry I was on mute so I'm just like you you see me like just mouththing like wow [laughter] so sorry. >> Yes. So I wrote a book I took very seriously Charlie Mer's advice for investors to rub their nose and their mistakes. And so I thought what better way to improve than to showcase my mistakes to the entire world. So I wrote a book um pretty embarrassing stuff but I had fun writing it. Um, and then shortly after that, I got scouted by a company called Tiny. So, Andrew Wilkinson, uh, the one of the founders of the company reached out and, uh, asked me to meet for coffee and then I was hired the following week. Um, and then I worked for him between Tiny and his family office for about 6 years. And then last year, March, I've had a bit of a desire to go out on my own, uh, which coincided with the a convenient laying off on behalf of a divorce that Andrew was going through at the time. So, all of a sudden, I was on my own and um, I guess I just wasn't quite sure at that point if I was going to start Maiden or if I was going to work for another firm. And so I interviewed with managers, small firms, large firms for about 8 months and I would apply with my research and every single time I would get a response that would be along the lines of we are not going to commission the depth of your research or we don't know how we're going to fit you in uh to our model. So [gasps and sighs] with all that said, um I had published a couple reports during the year and it seemed like the market response was very favorable and just generally speaking, I think the fact that we exist in a world that is dominated by passive um and quantitative investing strategies. I think the advent of AI is another factor to consider. Um, there's a real lack of in-depth research on the sell side and I from the perspective of an investor who likes to think like an owner, I wasn't really getting the information necessary uh to achieve that kind of um title for myself where I could call myself an owner of a particular company. there was a a lack of owner-like understanding conveyed in the reporting and so I took that and decided to run with it and here I am about a year later the business is doing very well and I moved to Toronto to take it to the next step so >> awesome thank thank you for your full background there and uh wow what a what an amazing story I mean um what's it's interesting when you bring up AI not to like hit on that but it's it it's been coming a lot up a lot recently even just on you know individual investor write up side of things where you know it's so easy nowadays where you can hey you can you know put all the main things in chat GPT or whatever >> I'm not uh unguilty what's the word not not guilty that I'm guilty of using it I don't know whatever uh not necessarily on those writeups but even in preparation for certain things uh you know and >> you know even on those you see in some of the writeups where it's just so easy to you know put together you a nice glossy research report, but it's it's now starting to become so painfully obvious that it's like, oh, this was clearly made with AI or chatbt or whatever. So, you're right like there is this need for these really indepth highquality deep dives into companies where, you know, as you said, it's you don't always get that owner operator perspective that really comes with, you know, having that human element, human touch. >> Yeah. And I think that I think that AI as well in its current iteration, it doesn't have the capacity to be original. And so in a world where there's less original work being produced potentially or presently and perspectively, I think it's never been a better time to roll up your sleeves and to do work that people are generally unwilling to do or don't want to do or are just not commissioned to do. So um most large firms are not going to commission an analyst to just focus on one company for 2 months straight >> analyze thousands of products to really understand what a company is, what it does and its competitive position. It's just not something that is commonly known and generally speaking to acquire that it means going beyond the reporting and most firms don't go beyond the reporting. Should we go full existential and just hope that that never happens with AI be being able to create fully original works? Can we just can we hope and pray? >> Yeah. I don't know. I don't know because I think that you would you would have to know what questions to answer it and I don't know how I would know what questions to under to an to ask it without understanding the unit level data because >> right >> frequently in the analyses that I'm conducting they involve the analysis of thousands of products >> both at the company level and at the competitor level and I think that there's always about 10% or so of products or services um that are atypical in the way that they're constructed or presented that I'm not sure AI would necessarily pick up unless you are aware of that nuance. And and I think as well I think it's just I guess you just have to know like there are lots of companies where I think analog sensors for example um there are over two dozen different types of analog sensors that sense different environmental phenomenon. Um that's not typically conveyed on a unit level basis in reporting. And so it would be it'd be difficult to understand how an investor would un know to answer the more granular important um questions related to the competitiveness of a company >> because they're frequently misconstrued. >> Oh, we're about to dive into that in in spades. I'm I have a feeling right now. So, you know, wanted to one of the other reasons I wanted to invite you on here, I really wanted to dig deeper into your investing philosophy that you clearly have done a lot put a lot of thought and effort and time into putting into different frameworks. For instance, I think in your work you described your your investment philosophy as doing financial archaeology. It's absolutely brilliant. I'm super jealous. Like that is just so good. Um so for you like what what does that mean in practice and how would you say it differs from the conventional fundamental research? >> Yeah I think I mean if you want to produce a differentiated outcome um you have to produce differentiated work and the foundation of differentiated work is differentiated behavior. So if you conduct an analysis that is unlikely to be replicated. So if you develop a process that's very difficult and time consuming at least in my experience it's more likely that you're um going to produce a body of work that is um [clears throat] unique at least to some degree from the general consensus. I like to say that if you find friends easily with the information you have, then the information that you have is is common and producing differentiated work is about acquiring uncommon information. So when I approach the analysis of a company, I approach it the way that an archaeologist would approach an undug dig uh site for for the first time. So no one has ever dug that particular archaeological site. They have no one to call with insight on on you know for someone who has experience excavating the site. They have to rely on their experience um their expertise and and the lessons bestowed from great practitioners. So when I begin analysis I usually have an overarching hypothesis and a method in which I test that hypothesis. So I kind of chart out a dig site and that usually involves getting every single company in an industry in a data set looking at 10 53 uh LTM kind of economics uh 10 53year average economics and comparing the shifts over time. So what companies have become more profitable? What companies have become less profitable? What companies are more levered less levered? What is the ownership structure like? and trying to just uncover questions that require answers. And it's just kind of an a [clears throat] sort of incremental coming up with questions, answering the questions, down the rabbit hole you go. So, excavating the site brushstroke by brushstroke until it's completely uncovered. Um, so that you acquire the understanding for yourself. Um, self-sufficiency I feel like is a a very important attribute for an investor to acquire. And I tend to be biased towards owner operators, which is pretty typical of of um value investors and and quality oriented investors. Um that's particularly acute in financials. Um [clears throat] economics tend to tend to kind of correlate, at least supern normal economics tend to correlate with owner operator structures. So, um, [clears throat] yeah, that's what I do. And it's usually an analysis, I would say, takes anywhere from 200 to 600 hours, um, depending on kind of the breadth and depth of the work involved. >> Absolutely. So, what what does the investable universe look like? What's some of your key criteria that you know is the base? And then you dig deeper from there. >> Well, I would say that in terms of size, um, we do have a minimum market cap of 200 million free flow. Um [clears throat] but personally 20 million um probably my minimum um any nation where there's a strong rule of law is another criteria. So adding that geopolitical or sort of that political risk kind of just adds complexity that doesn't need to be there. I >> think like every I think every mining company is hearing what you're saying is like okay fine I got [laughter] sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's unfortunate, but I mean I'm I'm more in the small cap space and midcap space just given um my clientele and made subscribers and um the the assets that they're working with. Maybe when I retire one day, we'll do more interesting work in in micro caps because that's where the really it's kind of the true wild west still exists. Um and um yeah, so owner operated structures, strong rule of law, um 200 million free float minimum. Um I like to think that I'm going to be able to understand the businesses. So I'm not the type of investor who will spend five or minutes or half an hour looking at a report and just dismiss whether they can understand it or not. I'm willing to test the limits of my understanding. And that's actually what I enjoy most about my work. So I enjoy learning about lagging edge technologies, finance companies, um [clears throat] kind of like the philosophy of finance where it's just really difficult to kind of sink your teeth into, but once you're through it, it's just so satisfying and it opens more doors. So I'm um yeah, kind of agnostic with respect to complexity. I think it actually tends to produce attractive opportunities where less participants are willing to analyze such names because of the work involved. Um and um yeah I mean reasonable valuation most of my work is revolves around assessing the competitiveness of companies. Um, so I'm trying to really really get into the weeds on what a company produces, where it produces it, what its competitors are producing, what is its competitive position with respect to disclosed market share because usually disclosures of market share are not representative of a company's true position, especially in kind of the small and midcap space. >> Absolutely. All right. So from there, you know, once you have your, you know, your main investable base, you know, now you're looking to dig a little deeper into maybe a few of those names given at any given time or maybe a value catalyst just happened or they just had a, let's just say, a breakthrough quarter or something like that. You know, what is what's your methodology from there for uncovering the layers and putting together a thesis? You know, do you talk to management? Love to hear the whole process. >> Yeah. So um I think usually the companies that I get most interested in present the most peculiar data. So to pro to provide an example of Alexis which is a company Belgian company that I'm a shareholder of um they have the highest returns on equity of any named pure next to Texas Instruments yet they generate revenue that is a tenth uh of [clears throat] their pure average. So how does that happen that a company is so much smaller yet so much more profitable? And so those are the type of situations where it's kind of easy to develop a hypothesis where you might be like, okay, well, I'm pretty sure that they're focused on a couple niches within the market then and they've optimized for those niches because how else are they so darn efficient relative to these much larger companies that should have economies of scale, etc., etc. So after so for something like that um I analyzed over 3,000 products to kind of determine exactly what Alexis is producing, what his competitors is producing. Um, and sure enough, the company specializes in magnetic um, latch and switch and position sensors for the automotive uh, industry. And they completely dominate that market generally speaking, particularly with position sensors, um, latch and switch sensors, they certainly dominate on the more sophisticated end of that spectrum. Um, and that was a very timeconsuming process, but it's doing that work that um allows an investor to acquire acquire that understanding. And yeah, so it would be figuring out what products the company has and uh based on some kind of some something weird like it's just the company's more profitable or maybe the balance sheet is just structured in a really atypical way. Um there's some kind of weird aspect about it economically that makes that that deeper work um that warrants that deeper work. >> Interesting. So that that's a great example on one where it ended up being coral. I love to hear on the other side where you know you I'm sure there's probably 10x more examples of this but love to hear on the other side and you don't have to name a name of the company. probably prefer you not to. I'd love to hear an example on the other side where you're like, "Okay, that's weird and interesting. Let me dive deeper thinking that there might be something to it, but then after doing you're like, "Oh, no. That was not what I thought it was going to be." >> Oh, that's a good question. A lot of the time it works out. Um [clears throat] Um, honestly, I I actually can't think of an example. So far, I'm I'm I have a I [clears throat] have a perfect um I don't know what what you >> Well, maybe it's a Hold on. Let me Maybe it's a rethink of this question cuz maybe it's it's not maybe it might ultimately I'm sure you've come into situations where it wasn't necessarily one that like you invested and ended up working out. But it also could be something like, well, that was that was interesting. Maybe it's not something I would invest in right now, but that was still really interesting to look into, >> right? Yeah. There are companies where um their competitiveness might be very compelling after doing that research, but there's been some kind of capital allocation decision. Um maybe they acquired a lot of new capacity in the late stages of a cycle and now all of a sudden there's a lot more risk that kind of creates opacity um around the maintenance of that uh competitiveness. And I think there are situations where that has occurred and that often coincides with degradation in the balance sheet. So it makes those companies particularly exposed if there's a recession. Um those are situations where I've identified companies that are very interesting, would love to own them, but there's been a fundamental change where I stopped doing the work. and and that last year that happened in one particular case where I was researching the business for a month and then realized there's too much um there's too much risk that I can't account for. >> Let me say this. How much do you balance the amount of time that you put into maybe researching one idea and maybe ask the question like, okay, is there a reason why this is taking so long to develop the thesis versus, you know, it's just clearcut, you know, not to say you won't continue to do the work, but it's it's it's a lot more clear versus one where it's just like, oh man, I'm >> putting a lot of time here. Like, is this worth continuing to dig further? Yeah, I think that the it should be relatively obvious within a week or two. Um, and if it's not obvious, then I won't continue. So, um, that [clears throat] might just be looking up all of the company's products and being like, "Wow, 75% of the products are like two products and yet they have 13 products listed on their website, right?" Like, that's really comp that that that supports my hypothesis. So, you need to find supporting evidence pretty early. Yeah. Otherwise, um it's time to give it up. That's how I approach it anyway. >> Nice. No, you know, I I that's one of my favorite questions to ask because there's a lot of folks that be listening can and sometimes might be overwhelmed, especially like in a micro cap of like, uh how do I balance the actual, you know, is this idea really that compelling, but I'm putting so much time into it that it's still not like and being able to break away from like, man, I just put so much time into this. There must be a thesis. there must be something there that I'm missing versus like you know what maybe maybe it's the simplest answer is there's nothing there and this other idea actually is really interesting and compelling >> happens a lot in micro cap because there's so many different possibilities. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that's just the way that it goes sometimes. Um I tend to be biased towards sort of capital cycle type investing. So I tend to be looking at companies um that have periods where they overearn and under. Indeed, most of Warren Buffett's companies have these characteristics where these companies can increase prices some of the time, but not all of the time. Um, and I tend to get quite interested in them when they are going through a cyclical downturn because then there's less prying eyes, more time to do long research, uh, long form research. Um, so that can kind of Yeah, but to your point, um, I would say that if you don't find confirming evidence relatively quickly, it's there's there might not be anything there. Like if if I found a if I found company a company where they had a minority share of the products produced, I would probably but I had this thesis that they were the dominant player, I would probably become uninterested. >> You should stick around in micro more. you'll have plenty of time to research most of these cuz most of the time nobody's ever heard of them. [laughter] >> You plenty little plenty of time to to put together a thesis. You know, if it if if the if it's a couple weeks like by all means you will um you know talk speaking to competitiveness um and looking the competitiveness of various companies that that you're doing deeper dive research. I when I was doing my research on on Maiden and your philosophy in the process, you have this framework called the testing market share framework. Can you can you describe a little bit of this and why it's so critical to your process? >> Yes. So testing market share very very important. So that gets back to what I was talking about where disclosures of market share are typically um typically don't properly convey the true competit competitiveness of a company. Um so there are a number of ways to test a company's um competitive position. So, I won't name the name, but there's a crane producer in Austria. Um, they produce knuckle boom cranes and they have 30% market share. And if you look at their uh if you look at all of their products and you look at all of their competitors products, um you will find information that seems to contradict disclosures of company market share where the company basically says that they have 30% market share, but if you actually look at the amount that their cranes are lifting, which is twice the amount of the next two competitors, you could thus conclude that they probably have sure 30% of the knockaboom crane industry but probably a majority share almost certainly in heavy duty knuckle boom cranes and that is the type of information where I think it's makes is what makes testing market share worthwhile. So a lot of it is product analysis. So analyzing on a company's websites in their cataloges, what are they doing? Um sometimes it's platform analysis, analyzing the platforms of different companies to assess inventory of certain products. Um sometimes it's um it's geospatial. So you're looking at the actual physical locations of stores and property and the use of that property for competitive potentially theoretically because it's not disclosed competitive purposes. Um so those are a few of the kind of big methods um that I go into for that. Absolutely. So as as part of your process at what one I guess two-parter one do you talk to management and if so like at what point in the process is are you do you [clears throat] end up speaking with management? Yeah. So, um I do speak with management after I have conducted a full analysis because then I get to kind of um really understand where color is needed. And it's also just nice because I'll send the report to management and then it's kind of like I'm doing the work that they would pay, you know, $40,000 for a consultant to do. they really love it and then they're eager to talk to me and it's a great way to kind of flesh out a report and also to prevent myself from being biased because I like a particular manager or you know they have certain behavioral characteristics that I find compelling prior to doing the sort of deep quantitative research >> that is a really very good process. Have you ever come has anybody not responded? You know, like you just put in these two 300 hours worth of work and you said to the management team thing like, "Oh, they'll really appreciate this at a at a minimum," you know, and uh >> yeah, >> complete ghosted. >> Uh only once. >> Only [laughter] once. >> Was it a short report? No, I'm just kidding. >> No, no, I don't write short reports. >> No, I know. I'm just kidding. Um that would that actually would have been kind of funny, though. Um >> if I if I didn't like myself, maybe I would. I >> [laughter] >> for reports. >> They h they have a place. They It has a place. I I uh there's quite a few folks I know that are, you know, they do they do very good work and and it's and it's of course everybody has their own. >> Of course. Absolutely. It's hard work though. >> It's so hard. I I >> want to go to court. [laughter] >> I I I give a lot of credit to the folks that are putting themselves out there and doing that. It is uh I don't have I don't have the the stomach uh to say the least. >> Exactly. you know, I try and ask unbiased questions to management team and then, you know, publish those interviews as much as possible. But at the same time, you know, you're not, >> you know, you're not trying to intentionally make anybody look stupid. Usually they'll do that themselves. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, so I mean a final question on putting you know obviously you run you run maiden financial you publish your research you know when how do you assess like okay this is a thesis I want to continue to flesh out even though you've been doing a ton of work on it versus like okay >> I think this is fully fleshed out ready to go I want to share this publicly or at least your subscribers. Yeah, I mean I think that there needs to either be valuation present that's favorable. So there's kind of um a clear riskreward where there's the potential for asymmetric an asymmetric return to be had at a very low level of risk. Um and my preferred setup is heads I make money, tails I make a lot of money. So I tend to be very conservative with um the I guess the valuation of companies. Um um yeah I think I think valuation is a big component. The other component is if there's nothing immediately actionable it's about doing preparatory work identifying companies that um may have very kind of clear competitive advantages that are not fully understood by the market at large and that would be those are the kind of two coins of that drives my work. So my most recent report was on a company that that um I don't think is actionable but was just worth understanding cuz a lot of the times um you know Charlie Munger had 2 weeks to make a decision on Wells Fargo like it's and the great financial crisis a lot of the time you just don't have the time to do the due diligence necessary to make a decision when those crises happen. And so as Charlie says opportunity comes to the prepared mind. So yeah, it would be mostly um valuation plus competitiveness or competitive competitiveness by itself. That's that's typically what I favor. It just makes um and and as well having a strong balance sheet. Those two things make investing decisions a lot easier, especially if that it is coupled with necessary demand where there's a long-term necessary demand for the product or service that's being rendered. >> 100%. I mean, how do you balance also from just running, you know, running the service, running this business where, you know, maybe one of those opportunities comes up, you're like, "All right, you know what? I'm going to put out a quick note or something like that for, you know, because it's something that is very actionable very quickly." You know, maybe you were taking a position, you know, like how how do you balance that? like, okay, obviously, you know, we got my our long form, you know, better have a cup of coffee on Sunday morning, ready to go reports versus our like, all right, it's Thursday morning, quick hitter. This crazy news is going down. Like, here's a quick hit or two pager of like why I'm finding this interesting right now. >> Yeah. So, um, if something is really compelling, we will just put out a very short form kind of initiation of coverage report where we're like, "This is compelling. it'll be two to five pages and then we will lead up with a longer form report um at a later date. So that's typically how we how we approach that. >> And just so we're perfectly clear so that we have it on record, you this none of this is sponsor research or company sponsor research. It's all all you. >> Yeah. >> And and my intern and my my contract analyst. Yeah. >> Nice. Very cool. Um, so my my favorite question to ask everybody on here and this is very appropriate because you put so much time and effort um from beginning in 2017 when you picked up one one up on Wall Street to now running your own research firm, you know, and with paid subscribers, the whole bit. What would you say was that aha moment and whether that was putting a thesis together or another investing experience talking whatever it was in your investing career that thus far that you were like okay this is this is my how this is my framework that will work for me this is how I want to do things I'm a financial archaeologist let's go I'm the Indiana Jones of of [laughter] financial markets like how do how do we you know what I can't coin you as the Indiana Jones I get did that nobody >> [laughter] >> Well, well, the I have to think of another archaeologist, but you're the financial archaeologist, you know, for for small micros, you know, what what was that aha moment? >> Um, focusing on how I best behave in the analytical and investment process. It was just completely introspective. So, it was because I think that, you know, there's no one way to invest. There's no one way to research. the best way to invest and the best ways to re to research is what jives best with your personality and I'm just not someone that feels comfortable doing kind of surface level research or or kind of even not even surface level like you you get medium depth and being like okay well I can say with absolute conviction that I understand this company and I said for me um I want that absolute conviction I want to know exactly what the company is because that's what I would do if I were an operator of these companies. This I would want to know exactly the positioning of my company and exactly the positioning of my competitors because we exist in a very competitive market and why would you not want to do that uh work. So I incorporate that in my research and as a result I behave better during market downturns. I am very good at disconnecting price volatility from business fundamentals and I think those two things correlate very well with with above average performance over time. So >> very good. >> You know when you're looking at we're we're coming to to the close here but you know when you're looking at your investable universe I mean what's where have you been seeing the most opportunity or where have you been spending most of your time and digging deep deeper into recently? >> Yeah. So, I feel so bad for my American subscribers because this year has been all Europe pretty much aside from the last report that I published. Um, even the next report that I published is on a European company and I'm I'm so sorry for them just because >> I knew you were going to say Europe. Literally on the pod we've I feel like I've done like four European, you know, like Europe is amazing right now and micro caps and stuff. So, I not even surprised one bit. >> Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I've been finding the most value, but it's not because I think that America is ending or some something like that. It's just that's where the best value is. And there are companies that produce products that are used all around the world. So we can get firsthand experience with them. And um strong rule of law. Um lots of owner operated structures. You have to be somewhat careful with them cuz sometimes they can be off operated as a bit of a thief. Um, but Europe is is kind of the place to be and I've really been involved in sort of lagging edge tech and industrials in in Europe specifically. >> Very cool. >> Yeah, >> we've we've covered so much. I mean, I guess maybe my last question or well, what was what was some of the biggest learning lessons that you took when you were at at Tiny? Um, I mean, you've spent so much of your career there. you know what what >> you know love to hear what some of the main things you took from that experience. >> Gosh. Well, I mean I think the the thing that I take most from working for Tiny and and working for Folly Partners Andrew's family office is is gratitude. Um he just left me alone and it's kind of [gasps] unusual to to have such trust given to you within an organization. Um, so I was kind of forced to develop the framework that I have for myself by kind of isolative introspection, if you will. Like I wasn't provided in any mentorship. Charlie and Warren and Peter Lynch were my mentors. They guided me through. Um, [clears throat] but it's more just gratitude. like I just I was given the environment that I needed to really get in touch with the work that I wanted to do and that I wanted to contribute to the industry. And yeah, that's that's the that's the big takeaway is um and I feel like if I were to like with my um intern, I just I just give them a framework and then leave them alone. Like I'm like I just want you to just stumble in the dark on this and just acquire a complete and comprehensive understanding by yourself. because I know you can do it and I don't want my own biases, you know, muddying your research process. Um, [clears throat] I want you to develop that self-sufficiency that I think that I think owners should have. Um, [clears throat] to make decisions based on your own research and your own work and of course in consultation with management, but after that work has been has been done. Um, [clears throat] I mean that that is some of the best advice possible. I mean it's and it's so important too, especially when you're weighing of, you know, it just gives you so much more freedom, you know, if you're going to go off on your own or if you're looking to, you know, join a shop, join another podcast, you know, something like that. Like people just want to know that you're self-sufficient. You you have your own brain. You have your own brain, you know. [laughter] You're not you're not just, you know, oh, I came out of this shop and this is how I, you know, I now just think like this, you know. No, it's you're adaptable and understand. >> Well, well, that's not what scientists do, right? >> Scientists are seldom like, well, this is like this universal approach. Like it's it's they're typically walking in without any expectation. They just have a method and a hypothesis and they just test and they don't really know what's going to happen necessarily. Um, so I'm very very cautious of developing universal frameworks in the sense that if I analyze one bank, I'm not going to use that same analytical framework for analyzing another bank. I'm just going to look at the bank and decide based on the information provided how best to analyze it. So, it's like I don't want to be um assuming that I know everything because I think that's a good way to miss I guess to kind of stop growing. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. >> So, Gwen, this has been awesome. I think to close out here, it's what I end almost every interview on is, you know, for folks that are listening in that are either just getting into investing or maybe I know you're not specifically a micro cap investor, but you know, bas your frameworks very much translate to micro cap investing. Um, what advice would you have for, you know, someone that's either new to the space or really looking to just dive head first? >> Oh, that's a that's a really that's a really good that's a really good question. Um I mean well I think of course you need to understand accounting and that includes um understanding how accounting can be manipulated easily manipulated. So um reading Howard Schill, reading Martin Friedson and Fernando Alvarez, uh Johnny Tracy, John C Tracy. um basically the kind of books that really get into the weed on weeds on how the income balance sheet and cash statements operate and the type of chicainery that can kind of mess with that. Um, but I would say honestly I think taking an interesting an interest in learning for its own sake is a very underutilized pursuit in our industry because what we want is we want results now and we want results as fast as possible and we want to get rich as fast as possible and I think that we give up a lot of learning in that process. Just approach a company and commit yourself to becoming an expert on that company and an expert on that industry and do it again and again and again and again because even if an opportunity may not be actionable today, doing that really deep work gives you a foundation to act with conviction when an opportunity does eventually arise and it will eventually arise. >> That is a phenomenal place to end it. So Gwen, where can our audience go and find more information about you and Maiden Financial? Um, yeah. So, you can visit my website, www.mmaidenfinanicial.io. Um, maybe there's a way to include my email in the show notes, but Gwen at maidenfinancial.io is my email. Um, LinkedIn is also another another look out Gwen Hoffmire and you'll find me on LinkedIn. And that's it. Those are my my avenues. >> Very, very cool. Well, Gwen, thank you so much for joining me today. Really do appreciate this. was so awesome. Uh I look forward to meeting you in person in Toronto and uh yeah, look forward to the next update. >> Amazing. Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to meeting you as well. >> Thank you. >> Okay, take care. [music] [music] >> [music]
Financial Archaeology: Deep Research and Uncommon Insights with Gwen Hofmeyr, Maiden Financial
Summary
Transcript
This podcast is forformational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities. SNN network, SNN Inc. and the Plano Microcap podcast and the representatives are not licensed brokers, broker dealers, market makers, investment bankers, investment adviserss, analysts, or underwriters. We do not recommend any companies [music] discussed. We may buy and sell securities in any company mentioned and make profit in the event those securities rise in value. We recommend you consult with a professional investment advisor, broker, or legal counsel before purchasing or selling any securities referenced in this podcast. Welcome to the Planet Microap podcast. I'm your host, Robert Craft. Thank you all so much for tuning in and for the continued support. If you like what you hear on the Planet Microap podcast, please take a moment to rate us five stars on Spotify or Apple podcast. It really helps more folks to discover the show and join in on the micro cap investing community. Our next conference, Planet Micro Cap Las Vegas 2026 is happening June 16 through 18, 2026 at the Bellagio Resort and Casino. This is the premier event for micro cap investors, issuers, and industry professionals. And you're not going to want to miss it. Visit planet microcapshow showcase.com for updates and to reserve your spot. See you in Vegas. Now, my guest on the show today is Gwen Hoffmire, founder and senior analyst at Maiden Financial. In this episode, Gwen walks us through her unique research methodology, which she refers to as financial archaeology. This is a process built around extremely deep, original investigative work designed to uncover uncommon information, insights that simply aren't available in typical company reports or mainstream research. We discuss how Gwyn routinely spends 200 to 600 hours analyzing a single company, validating market share by breaking down thousands of individual products and constructing an understanding of a business that is entirely independent of management narrative and sellside opinion. We also talk about how this approach leads to owner level conviction and why that conviction matters so much in the micro cap universe where volatility is high and broad consensus is often absent. Gwen also shares why some of the most compelling opportunities she finds today are in Europe, particularly in industrial and lagging edge technology companies and how AI is actually increasing the value of deep human research, not replacing it. So, thank you again for tuning in to the Planet Microap podcast and please enjoy my conversation with Gwen Hoffm. Gwen, thank you for joining me today. How you doing? >> Thank you for having me. It's another sunny day in Toronto, so I can't complain. >> Absolutely. No, it's great to have you. I mean, look, I I I reached out because for two reasons. One, you'd register for our event and, you know, I'm like, "All right, who what's going on? Made of Financial a research thing. What's going on?" And then, you know, of course, I do a quick Google and you see you're on one of my favorite shows, Value After Hours. I'm like, "Oh, well, we got to have going on here." And so, I I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and insights on here. >> Of course. >> Very cool. So, love to my first question that I ask everybody on here, you know, I'd love to get your background. you know, when what got you started on your investing journey and then maybe also catch us up to then the founding of Maiden Financial. >> Okay, that's a long story. Um, I'll try to keep it brief. So, I guess you would have to go back to 2017. I was in my final year of political science. So, I'm a political scientist by training. Um, and I was um just in a state of despair. I didn't want to be a policy analyst. I didn't want to be a lawyer. Um, and I certainly didn't want to work for the government. So, I was kind of in this existential area period of my life where I kind of needed a change. And one of, I guess, the industries that have always stood out to me, just my great-grandfather, FH Deacon, um, had a board on the Toronto Stock Exchange at one point. There's a lot of kind of family history in Canadian markets with my family. So, I went down to my local used bookstore, picked up one up on Wall Street. Um, and those first pages, it felt like waking up for the first time. So, in that first year, gosh, I read three dozen books, probably some of them five, six times over, started a blog, wrote a book um called The Half Wick Crustation on all the mistakes that I made during my first year investing. Um, yeah, >> keep going. I'm like enthralled. I'm just I'm just like sorry I was on mute so I'm just like you you see me like just mouththing like wow [laughter] so sorry. >> Yes. So I wrote a book I took very seriously Charlie Mer's advice for investors to rub their nose and their mistakes. And so I thought what better way to improve than to showcase my mistakes to the entire world. So I wrote a book um pretty embarrassing stuff but I had fun writing it. Um, and then shortly after that, I got scouted by a company called Tiny. So, Andrew Wilkinson, uh, the one of the founders of the company reached out and, uh, asked me to meet for coffee and then I was hired the following week. Um, and then I worked for him between Tiny and his family office for about 6 years. And then last year, March, I've had a bit of a desire to go out on my own, uh, which coincided with the a convenient laying off on behalf of a divorce that Andrew was going through at the time. So, all of a sudden, I was on my own and um, I guess I just wasn't quite sure at that point if I was going to start Maiden or if I was going to work for another firm. And so I interviewed with managers, small firms, large firms for about 8 months and I would apply with my research and every single time I would get a response that would be along the lines of we are not going to commission the depth of your research or we don't know how we're going to fit you in uh to our model. So [gasps and sighs] with all that said, um I had published a couple reports during the year and it seemed like the market response was very favorable and just generally speaking, I think the fact that we exist in a world that is dominated by passive um and quantitative investing strategies. I think the advent of AI is another factor to consider. Um, there's a real lack of in-depth research on the sell side and I from the perspective of an investor who likes to think like an owner, I wasn't really getting the information necessary uh to achieve that kind of um title for myself where I could call myself an owner of a particular company. there was a a lack of owner-like understanding conveyed in the reporting and so I took that and decided to run with it and here I am about a year later the business is doing very well and I moved to Toronto to take it to the next step so >> awesome thank thank you for your full background there and uh wow what a what an amazing story I mean um what's it's interesting when you bring up AI not to like hit on that but it's it it's been coming a lot up a lot recently even just on you know individual investor write up side of things where you know it's so easy nowadays where you can hey you can you know put all the main things in chat GPT or whatever >> I'm not uh unguilty what's the word not not guilty that I'm guilty of using it I don't know whatever uh not necessarily on those writeups but even in preparation for certain things uh you know and >> you know even on those you see in some of the writeups where it's just so easy to you know put together you a nice glossy research report, but it's it's now starting to become so painfully obvious that it's like, oh, this was clearly made with AI or chatbt or whatever. So, you're right like there is this need for these really indepth highquality deep dives into companies where, you know, as you said, it's you don't always get that owner operator perspective that really comes with, you know, having that human element, human touch. >> Yeah. And I think that I think that AI as well in its current iteration, it doesn't have the capacity to be original. And so in a world where there's less original work being produced potentially or presently and perspectively, I think it's never been a better time to roll up your sleeves and to do work that people are generally unwilling to do or don't want to do or are just not commissioned to do. So um most large firms are not going to commission an analyst to just focus on one company for 2 months straight >> analyze thousands of products to really understand what a company is, what it does and its competitive position. It's just not something that is commonly known and generally speaking to acquire that it means going beyond the reporting and most firms don't go beyond the reporting. Should we go full existential and just hope that that never happens with AI be being able to create fully original works? Can we just can we hope and pray? >> Yeah. I don't know. I don't know because I think that you would you would have to know what questions to answer it and I don't know how I would know what questions to under to an to ask it without understanding the unit level data because >> right >> frequently in the analyses that I'm conducting they involve the analysis of thousands of products >> both at the company level and at the competitor level and I think that there's always about 10% or so of products or services um that are atypical in the way that they're constructed or presented that I'm not sure AI would necessarily pick up unless you are aware of that nuance. And and I think as well I think it's just I guess you just have to know like there are lots of companies where I think analog sensors for example um there are over two dozen different types of analog sensors that sense different environmental phenomenon. Um that's not typically conveyed on a unit level basis in reporting. And so it would be it'd be difficult to understand how an investor would un know to answer the more granular important um questions related to the competitiveness of a company >> because they're frequently misconstrued. >> Oh, we're about to dive into that in in spades. I'm I have a feeling right now. So, you know, wanted to one of the other reasons I wanted to invite you on here, I really wanted to dig deeper into your investing philosophy that you clearly have done a lot put a lot of thought and effort and time into putting into different frameworks. For instance, I think in your work you described your your investment philosophy as doing financial archaeology. It's absolutely brilliant. I'm super jealous. Like that is just so good. Um so for you like what what does that mean in practice and how would you say it differs from the conventional fundamental research? >> Yeah I think I mean if you want to produce a differentiated outcome um you have to produce differentiated work and the foundation of differentiated work is differentiated behavior. So if you conduct an analysis that is unlikely to be replicated. So if you develop a process that's very difficult and time consuming at least in my experience it's more likely that you're um going to produce a body of work that is um [clears throat] unique at least to some degree from the general consensus. I like to say that if you find friends easily with the information you have, then the information that you have is is common and producing differentiated work is about acquiring uncommon information. So when I approach the analysis of a company, I approach it the way that an archaeologist would approach an undug dig uh site for for the first time. So no one has ever dug that particular archaeological site. They have no one to call with insight on on you know for someone who has experience excavating the site. They have to rely on their experience um their expertise and and the lessons bestowed from great practitioners. So when I begin analysis I usually have an overarching hypothesis and a method in which I test that hypothesis. So I kind of chart out a dig site and that usually involves getting every single company in an industry in a data set looking at 10 53 uh LTM kind of economics uh 10 53year average economics and comparing the shifts over time. So what companies have become more profitable? What companies have become less profitable? What companies are more levered less levered? What is the ownership structure like? and trying to just uncover questions that require answers. And it's just kind of an a [clears throat] sort of incremental coming up with questions, answering the questions, down the rabbit hole you go. So, excavating the site brushstroke by brushstroke until it's completely uncovered. Um, so that you acquire the understanding for yourself. Um, self-sufficiency I feel like is a a very important attribute for an investor to acquire. And I tend to be biased towards owner operators, which is pretty typical of of um value investors and and quality oriented investors. Um that's particularly acute in financials. Um [clears throat] economics tend to tend to kind of correlate, at least supern normal economics tend to correlate with owner operator structures. So, um, [clears throat] yeah, that's what I do. And it's usually an analysis, I would say, takes anywhere from 200 to 600 hours, um, depending on kind of the breadth and depth of the work involved. >> Absolutely. So, what what does the investable universe look like? What's some of your key criteria that you know is the base? And then you dig deeper from there. >> Well, I would say that in terms of size, um, we do have a minimum market cap of 200 million free flow. Um [clears throat] but personally 20 million um probably my minimum um any nation where there's a strong rule of law is another criteria. So adding that geopolitical or sort of that political risk kind of just adds complexity that doesn't need to be there. I >> think like every I think every mining company is hearing what you're saying is like okay fine I got [laughter] sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's unfortunate, but I mean I'm I'm more in the small cap space and midcap space just given um my clientele and made subscribers and um the the assets that they're working with. Maybe when I retire one day, we'll do more interesting work in in micro caps because that's where the really it's kind of the true wild west still exists. Um and um yeah, so owner operated structures, strong rule of law, um 200 million free float minimum. Um I like to think that I'm going to be able to understand the businesses. So I'm not the type of investor who will spend five or minutes or half an hour looking at a report and just dismiss whether they can understand it or not. I'm willing to test the limits of my understanding. And that's actually what I enjoy most about my work. So I enjoy learning about lagging edge technologies, finance companies, um [clears throat] kind of like the philosophy of finance where it's just really difficult to kind of sink your teeth into, but once you're through it, it's just so satisfying and it opens more doors. So I'm um yeah, kind of agnostic with respect to complexity. I think it actually tends to produce attractive opportunities where less participants are willing to analyze such names because of the work involved. Um and um yeah I mean reasonable valuation most of my work is revolves around assessing the competitiveness of companies. Um, so I'm trying to really really get into the weeds on what a company produces, where it produces it, what its competitors are producing, what is its competitive position with respect to disclosed market share because usually disclosures of market share are not representative of a company's true position, especially in kind of the small and midcap space. >> Absolutely. All right. So from there, you know, once you have your, you know, your main investable base, you know, now you're looking to dig a little deeper into maybe a few of those names given at any given time or maybe a value catalyst just happened or they just had a, let's just say, a breakthrough quarter or something like that. You know, what is what's your methodology from there for uncovering the layers and putting together a thesis? You know, do you talk to management? Love to hear the whole process. >> Yeah. So um I think usually the companies that I get most interested in present the most peculiar data. So to pro to provide an example of Alexis which is a company Belgian company that I'm a shareholder of um they have the highest returns on equity of any named pure next to Texas Instruments yet they generate revenue that is a tenth uh of [clears throat] their pure average. So how does that happen that a company is so much smaller yet so much more profitable? And so those are the type of situations where it's kind of easy to develop a hypothesis where you might be like, okay, well, I'm pretty sure that they're focused on a couple niches within the market then and they've optimized for those niches because how else are they so darn efficient relative to these much larger companies that should have economies of scale, etc., etc. So after so for something like that um I analyzed over 3,000 products to kind of determine exactly what Alexis is producing, what his competitors is producing. Um, and sure enough, the company specializes in magnetic um, latch and switch and position sensors for the automotive uh, industry. And they completely dominate that market generally speaking, particularly with position sensors, um, latch and switch sensors, they certainly dominate on the more sophisticated end of that spectrum. Um, and that was a very timeconsuming process, but it's doing that work that um allows an investor to acquire acquire that understanding. And yeah, so it would be figuring out what products the company has and uh based on some kind of some something weird like it's just the company's more profitable or maybe the balance sheet is just structured in a really atypical way. Um there's some kind of weird aspect about it economically that makes that that deeper work um that warrants that deeper work. >> Interesting. So that that's a great example on one where it ended up being coral. I love to hear on the other side where you know you I'm sure there's probably 10x more examples of this but love to hear on the other side and you don't have to name a name of the company. probably prefer you not to. I'd love to hear an example on the other side where you're like, "Okay, that's weird and interesting. Let me dive deeper thinking that there might be something to it, but then after doing you're like, "Oh, no. That was not what I thought it was going to be." >> Oh, that's a good question. A lot of the time it works out. Um [clears throat] Um, honestly, I I actually can't think of an example. So far, I'm I'm I have a I [clears throat] have a perfect um I don't know what what you >> Well, maybe it's a Hold on. Let me Maybe it's a rethink of this question cuz maybe it's it's not maybe it might ultimately I'm sure you've come into situations where it wasn't necessarily one that like you invested and ended up working out. But it also could be something like, well, that was that was interesting. Maybe it's not something I would invest in right now, but that was still really interesting to look into, >> right? Yeah. There are companies where um their competitiveness might be very compelling after doing that research, but there's been some kind of capital allocation decision. Um maybe they acquired a lot of new capacity in the late stages of a cycle and now all of a sudden there's a lot more risk that kind of creates opacity um around the maintenance of that uh competitiveness. And I think there are situations where that has occurred and that often coincides with degradation in the balance sheet. So it makes those companies particularly exposed if there's a recession. Um those are situations where I've identified companies that are very interesting, would love to own them, but there's been a fundamental change where I stopped doing the work. and and that last year that happened in one particular case where I was researching the business for a month and then realized there's too much um there's too much risk that I can't account for. >> Let me say this. How much do you balance the amount of time that you put into maybe researching one idea and maybe ask the question like, okay, is there a reason why this is taking so long to develop the thesis versus, you know, it's just clearcut, you know, not to say you won't continue to do the work, but it's it's it's a lot more clear versus one where it's just like, oh man, I'm >> putting a lot of time here. Like, is this worth continuing to dig further? Yeah, I think that the it should be relatively obvious within a week or two. Um, and if it's not obvious, then I won't continue. So, um, that [clears throat] might just be looking up all of the company's products and being like, "Wow, 75% of the products are like two products and yet they have 13 products listed on their website, right?" Like, that's really comp that that that supports my hypothesis. So, you need to find supporting evidence pretty early. Yeah. Otherwise, um it's time to give it up. That's how I approach it anyway. >> Nice. No, you know, I I that's one of my favorite questions to ask because there's a lot of folks that be listening can and sometimes might be overwhelmed, especially like in a micro cap of like, uh how do I balance the actual, you know, is this idea really that compelling, but I'm putting so much time into it that it's still not like and being able to break away from like, man, I just put so much time into this. There must be a thesis. there must be something there that I'm missing versus like you know what maybe maybe it's the simplest answer is there's nothing there and this other idea actually is really interesting and compelling >> happens a lot in micro cap because there's so many different possibilities. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that's just the way that it goes sometimes. Um I tend to be biased towards sort of capital cycle type investing. So I tend to be looking at companies um that have periods where they overearn and under. Indeed, most of Warren Buffett's companies have these characteristics where these companies can increase prices some of the time, but not all of the time. Um, and I tend to get quite interested in them when they are going through a cyclical downturn because then there's less prying eyes, more time to do long research, uh, long form research. Um, so that can kind of Yeah, but to your point, um, I would say that if you don't find confirming evidence relatively quickly, it's there's there might not be anything there. Like if if I found a if I found company a company where they had a minority share of the products produced, I would probably but I had this thesis that they were the dominant player, I would probably become uninterested. >> You should stick around in micro more. you'll have plenty of time to research most of these cuz most of the time nobody's ever heard of them. [laughter] >> You plenty little plenty of time to to put together a thesis. You know, if it if if the if it's a couple weeks like by all means you will um you know talk speaking to competitiveness um and looking the competitiveness of various companies that that you're doing deeper dive research. I when I was doing my research on on Maiden and your philosophy in the process, you have this framework called the testing market share framework. Can you can you describe a little bit of this and why it's so critical to your process? >> Yes. So testing market share very very important. So that gets back to what I was talking about where disclosures of market share are typically um typically don't properly convey the true competit competitiveness of a company. Um so there are a number of ways to test a company's um competitive position. So, I won't name the name, but there's a crane producer in Austria. Um, they produce knuckle boom cranes and they have 30% market share. And if you look at their uh if you look at all of their products and you look at all of their competitors products, um you will find information that seems to contradict disclosures of company market share where the company basically says that they have 30% market share, but if you actually look at the amount that their cranes are lifting, which is twice the amount of the next two competitors, you could thus conclude that they probably have sure 30% of the knockaboom crane industry but probably a majority share almost certainly in heavy duty knuckle boom cranes and that is the type of information where I think it's makes is what makes testing market share worthwhile. So a lot of it is product analysis. So analyzing on a company's websites in their cataloges, what are they doing? Um sometimes it's platform analysis, analyzing the platforms of different companies to assess inventory of certain products. Um sometimes it's um it's geospatial. So you're looking at the actual physical locations of stores and property and the use of that property for competitive potentially theoretically because it's not disclosed competitive purposes. Um so those are a few of the kind of big methods um that I go into for that. Absolutely. So as as part of your process at what one I guess two-parter one do you talk to management and if so like at what point in the process is are you do you [clears throat] end up speaking with management? Yeah. So, um I do speak with management after I have conducted a full analysis because then I get to kind of um really understand where color is needed. And it's also just nice because I'll send the report to management and then it's kind of like I'm doing the work that they would pay, you know, $40,000 for a consultant to do. they really love it and then they're eager to talk to me and it's a great way to kind of flesh out a report and also to prevent myself from being biased because I like a particular manager or you know they have certain behavioral characteristics that I find compelling prior to doing the sort of deep quantitative research >> that is a really very good process. Have you ever come has anybody not responded? You know, like you just put in these two 300 hours worth of work and you said to the management team thing like, "Oh, they'll really appreciate this at a at a minimum," you know, and uh >> yeah, >> complete ghosted. >> Uh only once. >> Only [laughter] once. >> Was it a short report? No, I'm just kidding. >> No, no, I don't write short reports. >> No, I know. I'm just kidding. Um that would that actually would have been kind of funny, though. Um >> if I if I didn't like myself, maybe I would. I >> [laughter] >> for reports. >> They h they have a place. They It has a place. I I uh there's quite a few folks I know that are, you know, they do they do very good work and and it's and it's of course everybody has their own. >> Of course. Absolutely. It's hard work though. >> It's so hard. I I >> want to go to court. [laughter] >> I I I give a lot of credit to the folks that are putting themselves out there and doing that. It is uh I don't have I don't have the the stomach uh to say the least. >> Exactly. you know, I try and ask unbiased questions to management team and then, you know, publish those interviews as much as possible. But at the same time, you know, you're not, >> you know, you're not trying to intentionally make anybody look stupid. Usually they'll do that themselves. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, so I mean a final question on putting you know obviously you run you run maiden financial you publish your research you know when how do you assess like okay this is a thesis I want to continue to flesh out even though you've been doing a ton of work on it versus like okay >> I think this is fully fleshed out ready to go I want to share this publicly or at least your subscribers. Yeah, I mean I think that there needs to either be valuation present that's favorable. So there's kind of um a clear riskreward where there's the potential for asymmetric an asymmetric return to be had at a very low level of risk. Um and my preferred setup is heads I make money, tails I make a lot of money. So I tend to be very conservative with um the I guess the valuation of companies. Um um yeah I think I think valuation is a big component. The other component is if there's nothing immediately actionable it's about doing preparatory work identifying companies that um may have very kind of clear competitive advantages that are not fully understood by the market at large and that would be those are the kind of two coins of that drives my work. So my most recent report was on a company that that um I don't think is actionable but was just worth understanding cuz a lot of the times um you know Charlie Munger had 2 weeks to make a decision on Wells Fargo like it's and the great financial crisis a lot of the time you just don't have the time to do the due diligence necessary to make a decision when those crises happen. And so as Charlie says opportunity comes to the prepared mind. So yeah, it would be mostly um valuation plus competitiveness or competitive competitiveness by itself. That's that's typically what I favor. It just makes um and and as well having a strong balance sheet. Those two things make investing decisions a lot easier, especially if that it is coupled with necessary demand where there's a long-term necessary demand for the product or service that's being rendered. >> 100%. I mean, how do you balance also from just running, you know, running the service, running this business where, you know, maybe one of those opportunities comes up, you're like, "All right, you know what? I'm going to put out a quick note or something like that for, you know, because it's something that is very actionable very quickly." You know, maybe you were taking a position, you know, like how how do you balance that? like, okay, obviously, you know, we got my our long form, you know, better have a cup of coffee on Sunday morning, ready to go reports versus our like, all right, it's Thursday morning, quick hitter. This crazy news is going down. Like, here's a quick hit or two pager of like why I'm finding this interesting right now. >> Yeah. So, um, if something is really compelling, we will just put out a very short form kind of initiation of coverage report where we're like, "This is compelling. it'll be two to five pages and then we will lead up with a longer form report um at a later date. So that's typically how we how we approach that. >> And just so we're perfectly clear so that we have it on record, you this none of this is sponsor research or company sponsor research. It's all all you. >> Yeah. >> And and my intern and my my contract analyst. Yeah. >> Nice. Very cool. Um, so my my favorite question to ask everybody on here and this is very appropriate because you put so much time and effort um from beginning in 2017 when you picked up one one up on Wall Street to now running your own research firm, you know, and with paid subscribers, the whole bit. What would you say was that aha moment and whether that was putting a thesis together or another investing experience talking whatever it was in your investing career that thus far that you were like okay this is this is my how this is my framework that will work for me this is how I want to do things I'm a financial archaeologist let's go I'm the Indiana Jones of of [laughter] financial markets like how do how do we you know what I can't coin you as the Indiana Jones I get did that nobody >> [laughter] >> Well, well, the I have to think of another archaeologist, but you're the financial archaeologist, you know, for for small micros, you know, what what was that aha moment? >> Um, focusing on how I best behave in the analytical and investment process. It was just completely introspective. So, it was because I think that, you know, there's no one way to invest. There's no one way to research. the best way to invest and the best ways to re to research is what jives best with your personality and I'm just not someone that feels comfortable doing kind of surface level research or or kind of even not even surface level like you you get medium depth and being like okay well I can say with absolute conviction that I understand this company and I said for me um I want that absolute conviction I want to know exactly what the company is because that's what I would do if I were an operator of these companies. This I would want to know exactly the positioning of my company and exactly the positioning of my competitors because we exist in a very competitive market and why would you not want to do that uh work. So I incorporate that in my research and as a result I behave better during market downturns. I am very good at disconnecting price volatility from business fundamentals and I think those two things correlate very well with with above average performance over time. So >> very good. >> You know when you're looking at we're we're coming to to the close here but you know when you're looking at your investable universe I mean what's where have you been seeing the most opportunity or where have you been spending most of your time and digging deep deeper into recently? >> Yeah. So, I feel so bad for my American subscribers because this year has been all Europe pretty much aside from the last report that I published. Um, even the next report that I published is on a European company and I'm I'm so sorry for them just because >> I knew you were going to say Europe. Literally on the pod we've I feel like I've done like four European, you know, like Europe is amazing right now and micro caps and stuff. So, I not even surprised one bit. >> Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I've been finding the most value, but it's not because I think that America is ending or some something like that. It's just that's where the best value is. And there are companies that produce products that are used all around the world. So we can get firsthand experience with them. And um strong rule of law. Um lots of owner operated structures. You have to be somewhat careful with them cuz sometimes they can be off operated as a bit of a thief. Um, but Europe is is kind of the place to be and I've really been involved in sort of lagging edge tech and industrials in in Europe specifically. >> Very cool. >> Yeah, >> we've we've covered so much. I mean, I guess maybe my last question or well, what was what was some of the biggest learning lessons that you took when you were at at Tiny? Um, I mean, you've spent so much of your career there. you know what what >> you know love to hear what some of the main things you took from that experience. >> Gosh. Well, I mean I think the the thing that I take most from working for Tiny and and working for Folly Partners Andrew's family office is is gratitude. Um he just left me alone and it's kind of [gasps] unusual to to have such trust given to you within an organization. Um, so I was kind of forced to develop the framework that I have for myself by kind of isolative introspection, if you will. Like I wasn't provided in any mentorship. Charlie and Warren and Peter Lynch were my mentors. They guided me through. Um, [clears throat] but it's more just gratitude. like I just I was given the environment that I needed to really get in touch with the work that I wanted to do and that I wanted to contribute to the industry. And yeah, that's that's the that's the big takeaway is um and I feel like if I were to like with my um intern, I just I just give them a framework and then leave them alone. Like I'm like I just want you to just stumble in the dark on this and just acquire a complete and comprehensive understanding by yourself. because I know you can do it and I don't want my own biases, you know, muddying your research process. Um, [clears throat] I want you to develop that self-sufficiency that I think that I think owners should have. Um, [clears throat] to make decisions based on your own research and your own work and of course in consultation with management, but after that work has been has been done. Um, [clears throat] I mean that that is some of the best advice possible. I mean it's and it's so important too, especially when you're weighing of, you know, it just gives you so much more freedom, you know, if you're going to go off on your own or if you're looking to, you know, join a shop, join another podcast, you know, something like that. Like people just want to know that you're self-sufficient. You you have your own brain. You have your own brain, you know. [laughter] You're not you're not just, you know, oh, I came out of this shop and this is how I, you know, I now just think like this, you know. No, it's you're adaptable and understand. >> Well, well, that's not what scientists do, right? >> Scientists are seldom like, well, this is like this universal approach. Like it's it's they're typically walking in without any expectation. They just have a method and a hypothesis and they just test and they don't really know what's going to happen necessarily. Um, so I'm very very cautious of developing universal frameworks in the sense that if I analyze one bank, I'm not going to use that same analytical framework for analyzing another bank. I'm just going to look at the bank and decide based on the information provided how best to analyze it. So, it's like I don't want to be um assuming that I know everything because I think that's a good way to miss I guess to kind of stop growing. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. >> So, Gwen, this has been awesome. I think to close out here, it's what I end almost every interview on is, you know, for folks that are listening in that are either just getting into investing or maybe I know you're not specifically a micro cap investor, but you know, bas your frameworks very much translate to micro cap investing. Um, what advice would you have for, you know, someone that's either new to the space or really looking to just dive head first? >> Oh, that's a that's a really that's a really good that's a really good question. Um I mean well I think of course you need to understand accounting and that includes um understanding how accounting can be manipulated easily manipulated. So um reading Howard Schill, reading Martin Friedson and Fernando Alvarez, uh Johnny Tracy, John C Tracy. um basically the kind of books that really get into the weed on weeds on how the income balance sheet and cash statements operate and the type of chicainery that can kind of mess with that. Um, but I would say honestly I think taking an interesting an interest in learning for its own sake is a very underutilized pursuit in our industry because what we want is we want results now and we want results as fast as possible and we want to get rich as fast as possible and I think that we give up a lot of learning in that process. Just approach a company and commit yourself to becoming an expert on that company and an expert on that industry and do it again and again and again and again because even if an opportunity may not be actionable today, doing that really deep work gives you a foundation to act with conviction when an opportunity does eventually arise and it will eventually arise. >> That is a phenomenal place to end it. So Gwen, where can our audience go and find more information about you and Maiden Financial? Um, yeah. So, you can visit my website, www.mmaidenfinanicial.io. Um, maybe there's a way to include my email in the show notes, but Gwen at maidenfinancial.io is my email. Um, LinkedIn is also another another look out Gwen Hoffmire and you'll find me on LinkedIn. And that's it. Those are my my avenues. >> Very, very cool. Well, Gwen, thank you so much for joining me today. Really do appreciate this. was so awesome. Uh I look forward to meeting you in person in Toronto and uh yeah, look forward to the next update. >> Amazing. Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to meeting you as well. >> Thank you. >> Okay, take care. [music] [music] >> [music]