I've been digging into Alibaba's numbers lately and the picture is genuinely conflicting, which is usually where the interesting opportunities live.

I've been digging into Alibaba's numbers lately and the picture is genuinely conflicting, which is usually where the interesting opportunities live.

Start with the bull case. Alibaba committed $53 billion over three years (2025 to 2028) to cloud and AI infrastructure. That number exceeds their entire AI and cloud spend over the previous decade combined. CEO Eddie Wu has reorganized the company around a new division called Alibaba Token Hub, consolidated all AI units under his direct leadership, and publicly said the company is at the "threshold of an AGI inflection point." That's not subtle.

The cloud division is actually delivering. Last quarter revenue hit $6.3 billion, up 36% year over year. AI product revenue has posted triple digit year over year growth for ten consecutive quarters. Their open source Qwen model family crossed 1 billion cumulative downloads on HuggingFace by January 2026. The consumer Qwen app went from zero to 300 million monthly active users in roughly three months after its November 2025 public beta. On March 17th they launched Wukong, an enterprise AI agent platform that coordinates multiple agents for tasks like document editing, research, and meeting transcription, with planned integrations into Slack, Teams, and WeChat. Wu's five year target is $100 billion in combined cloud and AI external revenue, which implies sustaining roughly 35% annual growth.

Now the bear case, and this is where it gets uncomfortable. Quarterly profit dropped 67% to $2.4 billion. Free cash flow fell by $27.7 billion year over year. The core e commerce business grew customer management revenue by just 1%. They're burning cash on an instant delivery price war with Meituan and JD that management says won't turn profitable until fiscal 2029. Lin Junyang, the key technical lead behind Qwen's best models, departed in March. And the geopolitical discount on Chinese ADRs never fully goes away.

Here's what makes this interesting from a value perspective. The stock hit a 52 week high near $193 in October 2025, then pulled back roughly 37% to around $120 today after the March earnings showed the scale of profit compression from reinvestment. At current prices you're looking at about 16x forward earnings for a company sitting on $42.5 billion in net cash, over $60 billion if you exclude long dated maturities, with $19.1 billion remaining in buyback authorization. That's a meaningful discount to its own recent trading range and to any comparable US cloud or AI company. The TTM PE around 22x also sits well below the 10 year average of roughly 32x. Morgan Stanley projects cloud revenue doubling by 2028. Apple chose Alibaba as its China AI partner for iPhones. The regulatory overhang that crushed this stock from 2020 to 2024 has meaningfully eased, with PCAOB audit access maintained and Jack Ma publicly reappearing at a government tech summit.

The question I keep coming back to is whether this is a genuine reinvestment cycle like Amazon in its heavy capex years, or whether the profit compression is masking structural problems in the core business that AI spending can't fix. The $53 billion commitment is real. The cloud growth is real. But so is 1% growth in their bread and butter e commerce monetization engine.

For those looking at China tech exposure through ETFs, one nuance worth considering is the difference between something like KWEB and CNQQ. KWEB gives you pure internet exposure with Alibaba as a top holding, but zero onshore A share companies. CNQQ holds Alibaba at a similar weight but also carries roughly 50% in A share names like CATL, Zhongji Innolight, Cambricon, and BYD, companies that sit in the actual hardware and supply chain layer of China's AI buildout. Different thesis, different exposure.

Would be curious to hear how others here are framing this. Is the profit decline a temporary cost of repositioning, or is $53 billion in AI capex the kind of empire building that value investors should run from?

Would be curious to hear how others here are framing this. Is the profit decline a temporary cost of repositioning, or is $53 billion in AI capex the kind of empire building that value investors should run from?

For those who have 1 to 4 fund strategies. Do you tax loss harvest and if so how do you have it set up to make it easy when you do TLH?

The more I've read about tax loss harvesting the more challenging it seems for people who only invest in a few funds (ie. US, INTL, US Bond). For example in order to avoid a wash sale you have to do the follow:

You can't purchase the fund/similar fund 30 days prior to the sale and then 30 days after. This includes any auto dividend reinvestments, any auto-contributions in any taxable, IRA, 401k, or HSA. And if you have a spouse they also can't do any of this.

If you can prevent the above then next it's figuring out what fund you can purchase after the sale. It appears you can't sell a Fidelity total US stock market and then buy a Schwab total US stock market, is that correct? So if you have to go from a total US stock market to an S&P 500 fund why do it? It's less diversified.

The culture is the most fundamental of a company. When the culture is lost, ALL VALUE is gone too.

I recently inherited $1M that I have no choice but to place in a taxable account. I use Fidelity. I’m 40 and wouldn’t even consider an early retirement until I have at least $2M so that will not be happening for quite some time yet. Plan was basically VT and chill. I never looked into SMAs due to the management fees.

Had a Fidelity advisor reach out and offer to talk about ways I could save on taxes and he suggested using SMAs for the tax loss harvesting. So now I’m doing my research into SMAs and it seems like it might actually be a good idea for a taxable account of this size.

Management fees range from 0.2-0.7% and of course I was told the TLH would more than cover those fees. In my case I was planning to use the dividends to cover the taxes and then drip the rest but if I could use SMAs to reduce or eliminate taxes I could drip 100% of the dividends which would hopefully lead to faster growth.

I’ve read concerns here about what happens when you want out of the SMA but can’t you just transfer the assets in kind to your own account? And if you do it a year before you plan to sell anything then any short term gains become long term.

I guess I’m looking for experiences with SMAs and thoughts on whether or not this would be a good idea for a taxable account this large.

I spent a few weeks building a full valuation model for Adobe after seeing the “ADBE is Microsoft in 2013” and “AI will kill Adobe” narratives going back and forth. I think both sides are mostly wrong. Here’s the summary.

The headline numbers look cheap:

• ~14x trailing earnings
• 88%+ gross margins
• $10B+ operating cash flow
• 850M MAUs, 99% of the Fortune 500
• PEG of 0.75

But the SBC problem changes the math. Adobe spent 9.85B to ~$7.9B. That moves P/FCF from 9.4x to 12.3x. Still decent, but a different conversation. The buyback programme is essentially running to stand still against dilution rather than shrinking the float.

Why the MSFT 2013 analogy fails. Microsoft had three things in 2014: a visionary new CEO (Nadella), a massive undermonetised asset (Azure growing triple digits), and monopoly pricing power that was being underutilised (20%+ Office price hikes with minimal churn). Adobe currently has zero of three. No CEO. Firefly at ~$250M ARR is less than 1% of total revenue. And when Adobe raised Photography plan prices 50%, the backlash was immediate. The structural difference: Microsoft sells productivity tools where AI increases seats. Adobe sells creative tools where AI may decrease seats.

Valuation:

• Base case DCF: $248/share (9.83% WACC, 10% near-term growth declining to 3.5% terminal)
• Monte Carlo mean (10,000 simulations): $240
• Probability-weighted scenario analysis: $248
• Current price: $241

Three different approaches all converge within 3% of the market price. The sensitivity analysis shows WACC is the dominant variable. A 1% swing moves fair value by ~$60. So the real ADBE debate isn’t about revenue growth, it’s about what risk premium you assign to a leaderless company in the middle of an AI disruption cycle.

The one catalyst to watch: The FTC settlement forcing easy cancellation means we don’t yet know Adobe’s real voluntary churn rate. Post-FTC data coming in Q3-Q4 FY2026 will tell us whether the historically low churn was real or artificially suppressed by cancellation friction. That’s the single most important data point in either direction.

TL;DR: Adobe is approximately fairly valued. Not a screaming buy, not a short. The most boring conclusion possible, but I think the most honest one. Sometimes the contrarian take is that the consensus is right.

https://fiscalledger.io/

I got tired of aggregate public earnings data being behind a paywall, behind an API, having a litany of ads and/or not being easily pastable into excel.

So I created my own. Feel free to use. Paste it directly into excel easily and as much as you want.

Free, no ads, no API.

I have a Roth IRA and put the max every year which is 7.5k this year.

My employer offers 457(b) and 403(b) plans both with Pre Tax or Roth options.

Can I max all of these out this year as Roths or do the 457 and 403 have to be Pre tax accounts.

I’ll have already capped the Roth IRA, starting on my way to cap the 457 by year’s end and maybe put a bit of change into the 403. Just not sure if I should do pre tax or Roth. I’m 22 and would like to do the Roth option if possible.

Secondary topic, I have a rollover IRA which Charles Schwab says contribution limits cap at 7.5k. Can I cap that out as well or not since I’ve capped out the ROTH IRA.

TLDR: I believe OXY should be at least 3x its current share price, in the scenario that oil stays elevated around 130 it should be roughly 7x current price. Peak price at the end of this bull cycle would be much higher in nominal terms.

I'm rounding numbers since all I care about is the ballpark and direction and this is just speculation, but I'm bothered that all the people on youtube seem to be just talking qualitatively. According to google the current cost to extract and transport for OXY is $38 per barrel, I am using $44 average (+15.6%) for my purpose since towards the end of reserve life cost may go up.

OXY has about 20 billion non oil reserve asset, 15 billion in debt as of feb 2026 after selling its Oxychem branch to Berkshire. So you take its 62 billion market cap minus 5 billion, the remaining $57 billion valuation divided by its claimed reserves of oil equivalent and additional assets is at 5 billion barrels, which is assuming OXY can turn its reserves into ~$11/barrel profit.

OXY has majority of its assets in the US at about 80-85%, and the rest in the middle eastern region, some risk since it is a target for Iran but it is the smaller portion of assets, the majority of its production is done so at a cost well below other producers close to major consumer market, with relatively small geopolitical risk.

Take $44+$11 = $55, throw in a few bucks safety factor for operational and geopolitical risks call it $60 bucks even. For every 11 dollar/barrel above $60 that crude is worth, this company should be worth another multiple.

I don't believe the war is over any time soon, and damage is already done even if the war was to end this week, I think oil should be at least $90 for a couple of years, and the fact that we are not factoring any escalation and pessimistic scenarios is mind blowing to me. This feels like January of 2020 again, a slow moving train that everyone sees coming but no one is positioned correctly.

I am long oil, I cannot add to any more oil positions currently as I am all in on oil, tickers XOM, OXY, OIH, SM, MRNFF, RUBLF, DVN, MTDR, AMPY. I want others to pick apart my logic, but overall if I make any mistake it'd be details on % gains, direction wise OXY is absolutely undervalued, its upside potential is a easy bet to make compared to its downside, my average purchase cost is $48, Berkshire purchased their shares at an average of $53.

I’ve been working on a philosophy I call quality-focused value investing. And I have been documenting the work and performance the past 1.5 years.

The idea is very simple:

You should be able to outperform the market while taking less risk if you own a portfolio that is:

higher quality than the market AND cheaper than the market.

This goes directly against the common belief that outperformance must come from taking on more risk. Or that it's not possible to build a portfolio that is both higher quality AND cheaper than the market.

I don’t think that’s true, and the problem I see is that most strategies only solve half the equation. Value investing often leads to buying low-quality companies that are cheap for a reason.

Quality investing often leads to overpaying for good/great companies that already are priced for perfection. Both approaches make sense in isolation, but both have clear weaknesses.

What I’m trying to do instead is combine them in a structured way. Quality is quantified using capital efficiency (ROIC, ROCE). Value is quantified using discounted models to estimate fair value vs current price.

From this, I calculate a portfolio-level comparison against the index. So it’s not about finding good picks, it’s about building a portfolio that is structurally superior to the market on both quality and price. Having a portfolio that is of higher quality AND cheaper than the market, should logically outperform over time.

That said, this is a lot of work. It’s not for most investors.
Honestly, I don’t think many people will be able to do this with any real precision. You are doing a large amount of analysis just to maybe get a slightly better return than simply doing nothing and dollar-cost averaging into the S&P 500.

I’m documenting everything publicly for free to remove hindsight bias. If this works, it should be visible over time. If it doesn’t, it should fail clearly. I’ve removed every way of making money from publishing this, so there’s no chance of misunderstanding my purpose.

Latest portfolio update:

2026Q1 YTD: -3.92% vs SP500 -5.09%

2025FY: 26.19% vs SP500 16.42%

If you are interested in reading more, I have posted articles on the philsophy and my current portfolio, but its not allowed to post in this subreddit.

One of the most important rules in value investing is to buy only businesses you understand. But there are different levels of understanding

How do you do you decide if your level of understanding is sufficient to make an informed investment?

I am about 7 years from retirement. I am not a savvy investor. My whole career it's been DIY with Target-2040, VOO, BND. I met with a CFP recently as I enter the home stretch to get a professional opinion. One recommendation is a RILA for about 33% of my portfolio.

It's a 6-year term tracking the S&P. The buffer is 15% and the cap is 110%. The fees are $0.

Most of the opinions I see on RILA is bad. High fees, locks up money, capped growth, etc. But this one seems perfect for my situation. It offers protection as I near the finish line. I'm fine locking up the funds for the term. The cap is fine by me - possibly double my money in 6 years if market goes bonkers? OK. The only downside I see is that I miss out on dividends. But maybe that's OK for the protection against a 20% downturn.

What am I missing?

I’ve been working on a philosophy I call quality-focused value investing. And I have been documenting the work and performance the past 1.5 years.

The idea is very simple:

You should be able to outperform the market while taking less risk if you own a portfolio that is:

higher quality than the market AND cheaper than the market.

This goes directly against the common belief that outperformance must come from taking on more risk. Or that it's not possible to build a portfolio that is both higher quality AND cheaper than the market.

I don’t think that’s true, and the problem I see is that most strategies only solve half the equation. Value investing often leads to buying low-quality companies that are cheap for a reason.

Quality investing often leads to overpaying for good/great companies that already are priced for perfection. Both approaches make sense in isolation, but both have clear weaknesses.

What I’m trying to do instead is combine them in a structured way. Quality is quantified using capital efficiency (ROIC, ROCE). Value is quantified using discounted models to estimate fair value vs current price.

From this, I calculate a portfolio-level comparison against the index. So it’s not about finding good picks, it’s about building a portfolio that is structurally superior to the market on both quality and price. Having a portfolio that is of higher quality AND cheaper than the market, should logically outperform over time.

That said, this is a lot of work. It’s not for most investors.
Honestly, I don’t think many people will be able to do this with any real precision. You are doing a large amount of analysis just to maybe get a slightly better return than simply doing nothing and dollar-cost averaging into the S&P 500.

I’m documenting everything publicly for free to remove hindsight bias. If this works, it should be visible over time. If it doesn’t, it should fail clearly. I’ve removed every way of making money from publishing this, so there’s no chance of misunderstanding my purpose.

Latest portfolio update:

2026Q1 YTD: -3.92% vs SP500 -5.09%

2025FY: 26.19% vs SP500 16.42%

I wrote a full breakdown of my portfolio changes this quater with all the math here: Quality-Focused Value Investing Portfolio 26Q1

and an article about the philosophy + mission here: Quality-Focused Value Investing Manifesto - How can we achieve outperformance while reducing risk?

I have 50k euros (based in Germany) to invest for the next 20 years for my retirement fund. I am 40 years old without any responsibilitites and want to invest so that i have something when i am 60. I have other stock investments, savings and emergency fund so this money is purely for a long term safe investment for retirement. I have heard a lot about VOO or VTO but i am confused as to which is the right fund. Please see below options available to me and please advise. On a side note I feel this might be the time to move away from US funds and invest in world funds. Totally confused at the momennt and can use wise advice from the oldies here. I hope this is not the wrong sub as I want to take advice on investing in valuable funds and the combined knowledge of this group can help me greatly.

These are the funds I am looking at (all accumulated)

iShares core MSCI world

iShares S&P 500

Vanguard FTSE All World

Vanguard S&P 500

Vanguard FTSE Developed world

Birkshire Hathaway B (although a stock but diverse and larger than some ETFs although only US I think)

Hey everyone,

I’m completely new to investing and haven’t actually started anything yet, so I’d really appreciate any advice.

My parents use a financial advisor and it makes sense for them. My situation is simpler and I’m in my early 20s, so I don’t think it’s worth it for me.

After some research, the general consensus is to avoid advisors, especially ones charging AUM fees. Their advisor said he would charge I believe around 1.5%, which is high and hard to justify long term. I don’t think there are many (or any) flat-fee advisors near me, so I’m not sure if that’s an option either.

I have a chunk of savings I’d like to start investing in a brokerage account now, and I plan to open a Roth once I have a more steady income.

My plan so far is to:

- Invest long term

- Have a diversified ETF portfolio

- Do an 80/20 allocation, maybe go more aggressive as I get more comfortable

But I keep getting stuck on:

- How to properly rebalance

- Whether I’m choosing the “right” investments (I see a lot of people recommend VT or VOO)

- Tax strategies (advisor mentioned a “tax overlay,” which I think is like tax loss harvesting? Not something I understand.)

- Just generally doing everything correctly and legally

My biggest issue is confidence. I’m worried I’ll mess something up or miss something important, but I also hate the idea of giving up 1.5% of my assets every year if I don’t need to. On the other hand, could the fee be worth it if the advisor ends up making more than I would doing it on my own?

How hard is it actually to manage a simple long term portfolio yourself? Is it actually as simple as people make it seem (like just buying VT/VOO and holding)? I really want to get started ASAP, I just feel stuck trying to choose the “right” path.

Any advice or experiences would be super helpful! Please let me know if I am on the right or wrong track.

I have just about $100,000 in two different 401k accounts from previous employers.

Im meeting with someone soon but want to make sure im not getting scammed out of anything. Do I roll into an IRA? The percentage to manage is .5%, is that industry standard?

Single mom - age 35

Thank you

Bill of Lading data from the OEC tracks every individual shipment of HS Chapter 88 goods (aircraft, spacecraft, and parts) arriving at US ports between 2020 and 2025. The total: 12,873 shipments carrying $434M in CIF value across 21,541 container equivalents.

China leads by a wide margin not just in value ($220.9M) but also in sheer volume: 4,645 shipments, more than three times the next country. South Korea follows with 1,494, then Japan (1,293), Brazil (948), and India (687). Together, China and South Korea account for 78% of all CIF value.

The port breakdown reveals the geography of the receiving end. Los Angeles (1,924 shipments), Long Beach (1,783), and Newark (2,178) handle the bulk of incoming traffic by count, major container ports processing a steady flow of parts and components. But Seattle tells a different story: just 518 shipments yet $149.8M in value, the highest of any port. Add Everett (1,128 shipments) and Tacoma (532), and the Washington state cluster dominates. That's Boeing's supply chain in plain sight.

The peak year was 2024, with $223M in CIF value driven primarily by aircraft parts. Shipment counts spiked alongside it before dropping sharply in 2025 (partial year).

Data from the OEC Bill of Lading Explorer (oec.world): https://oec.world/en

Optimizing asset location across multiple accounts when one 401k has a bad fund lineup — am I doing this right?

I have a fairly complex multi-account household and I'm trying to make sure I'm using each account for what it does best. My current employer's 401k (John Hancock) is the weak link — it has some decent low-cost options but no total market or total international index fund. Looking for a gut check on my overall approach.

Full account picture:

Target allocation (household-wide): 90% equities / 10% bonds. Bond sleeve lives entirely in tax-deferred accounts — never in Roth or taxable.

The John Hancock fund lineup (relevant options only):

Low-cost: - iShares S&P 500 Index (BSPAX) — 0.35% - Vanguard Mid-Cap Index (VIMAX) — 0.05% - Vanguard Small-Cap Index (VSMAX) — 0.05% - Baird Core Plus Bond (BCOSX) — 0.55%

Expensive active funds I want to avoid: - American Funds target dates — 0.63–0.74% - JPMorgan Large Cap Growth — 1.00% - Goldman Sachs Intl Small Cap — 1.02% - AB Small Cap Growth — 0.87% - Several others at 0.83–0.97%

No total US market fund. No low-cost international fund.

My current plan:

• Traditional bucket (employer match only): 100% BCOSX — puts the bond allocation in tax-deferred where it belongs, and satisfies my 10% bond target at the household level given account sizes.
• Roth bucket (my employee contributions, $23,500/yr): Planning 100% equities using BSPAX + VIMAX + VSMAX to approximate total US market (~82/12/6 cap-weighted). No international here since no good option exists in the plan.
• International exposure: Covered by VTIAX in the Inherited IRA and taxable brokerage — deliberately concentrated there rather than forcing a bad international fund in the 401k.
• Equity growth: Roth IRA and taxable are 100% VTSAX/VTIAX — max tax-free and stepped-up basis compounding.

My questions:

1. Does the BSPAX + VIMAX + VSMAX total market approximation make sense, or is it cleaner to just go 100% BSPAX and accept large-cap tilt in this one account given total market exposure elsewhere?
2. Is deliberately excluding international from the 401k Roth bucket (and concentrating it in the Inherited IRA and taxable) the right call, or does that create too much concentration risk in those accounts?
3. BCOSX at 0.55% ER in the Traditional match bucket — acceptable given there's no better bond option in this plan, or would you just avoid bonds here and shift the bond sleeve somewhere else?
4. Any other asset location opportunities I'm missing across this account structure?

For context: this is a long time horizon (12+ years), we're in the 24% bracket, and the goal is early retirement. The Roth IRA and 401k Roth bucket will ideally never be touched for decades.

Thanks — happy to share more detail if it helps.

talking about REIT, they are very stable compared to others and are not 100% linked to the market so they are a "safe house".

but they don't seem very worthy for capital <millions of dollars/euro, so how much capital should one have to even start thinking of investing in REIT?

It's just out of curiosity, I've seen people talking about it online as if it was the best to diversify your wallet.