Through-cycle equity research.

Finance MBA, CFA Level 2 candidate, former private equity. My team out of Cal State Fullerton won the 2023 CFA Institute Research Challenge for the Americas region and advanced to the global final in Washington, D.C. I publish IB-grade equity research across the corners of the market I follow most closely — semis and AI infrastructure (Micron, NVDA, AMD), energy (XOM, CVX), and the commodities + macro layer that drives them — focused on through-cycle valuation and what the market is implicitly pricing in.

Most independent finance writing online is either macro narrative or hot-take stock pitches. The work I publish here sits closer to a sell-side IC memo: audited models, peer-blended multiples, scenarios with cycle-aware paths, and reverse-DCF decompositions that quantify the perpetual growth rate the market price implicitly requires. Every assumption is published; every formula is auditable. The Python + Excel pipeline that produces the workbooks is free to download.

What I'm working on now

Building a through-cycle thesis on a name in memory with a cyclical comp — workbook is finalised, write-up lands soon. New pieces go out on Substack and live in the archive here. Side artifacts — the DCF pipeline, sector scorecards, occasional long PDFs — sit on the projects page.

Get in touch

Always up for serious conversations about public markets — fellow analysts, fund teams, family offices, other writers, anyone who reads filings carefully. If you want to compare notes on a name, argue about a thesis, or you're working on something where my modelling pipeline could be useful, email is best. I do this work because the work is the point.

Background

• 2026–Present Independent equity research · bpleon.com
• CFA Level 2 candidate
• 2023 CFA Institute Research Challenge · Americas region winner with team out of Cal State Fullerton; advanced to global final, Washington, D.C.
• 2022–2023 Investment professional · lower-middle-market private equity
• 2023 MBA · Finance

Elsewhere

Writing: bpleon.substack.com and the archive here.
Email: [email protected].
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brandonpleon.