build-thesis

Build a two-sided thesis on a name

Turn "everyone's talking about NVDA — should I believe it?" into a thesis with a spine: what has to be true, where you differ from the crowd, and what would prove you wrong.

Judge the name from BOTH sides. Most real money is medium- or short-term and can't wait for value to revert — so the right side (is the market actually favoring this?) is usually what drives realized P&L. Don't stop at "it's cheap."

Procedure (don't answer from memory — run the tools)

The tools: traderhub equity for valuation / estimates / consensus, alice analysis quant for relative strength, momentum, and z-score vs history, traderhub board for the sector/macro frame, alice rss grep for the narrative. (See the traderhub, alice-analysis, alice skills.)

0. Anchor the comparison set. The right side is relative — "strong" only means something against peers. If a value-chain map for this name's theme exists in the dossier (from scan-value-chain), use it as the peer/chain set. If not, sketch the chain first: without it you don't know what to compare against.

1. State the claim in one sentence — what has to happen for this to work.

2. LEFT side — does the number stand up, and where do you differ from consensus?

   • Your own quant: valuation against its own history and against chain peers; the 2–3 assumptions the value actually rests on.
   • Others' quant: where consensus / estimates sit — and the part that matters, your variant view: where you disagree with the street, and why. No variant view, no edge.
   • What must be true (left): the load-bearing valuation assumptions.
   • Disconfirming signals (left): what would break the fundamental case.

3. RIGHT side — is the market itself favoring this? (cross-sectional, on the chain from step 0)

   • Relative strength: this name vs its layer peers vs the chain vs the market — leader or laggard? (a laggard is either a left-side setup or a falling knife — say which.)
   • Where capital is rotating: into this node/name, or out of it. Flow data is thin — read it through price/volume momentum, market breadth (what's leading vs lagging), and the news narrative.
   • Sector + macro tailwind: is the whole chain on the right side of macro, or is this name swimming against it?
   • What must be true (right): the trend / flow / sector strength that must persist.
   • Disconfirming signals (right): momentum break, capital rotating out, the chain rolling over. (These are exactly the hooks a position monitor watches.)

4. Consensus & priced-in. Is this already the consensus trade? Has the easy money gone? A correct left+right thesis that everyone already holds is a crowded trade, not an edge — and the variant view is where any edge survives.

5. Verdict. Combine the sides → is the thesis real, and is the opportunity a left-side entry (early, cheap, market not yet confirming) or a right-side entry (market confirming, pay up for lower timing risk) — or neither. Often the chain map points you off the crowded leader toward a less-crowded name carrying the marginal strength.

Output — write it into the dossier

Persist the thesis as <theme>/notes/<TICKER>.md in the dossier the value-chain scan started (confirm the layout with the user if none exists — don't impose one). The per-name note is the living thesis: the claim, both sides, what-must- be-true, and the disconfirming-signal watchlist. Next session reads it and updates it as the signals move — never re-derives from zero. The right-side disconfirming signals are the baton to a position-monitor step. To act on the verdict — size and place the trade through the approval flow — that's the alice-uta skill.

Worked example: NVDA (illustrative — run it fresh for any name)

Claim: NVDA keeps compounding data-center revenue because hyperscaler capex hasn't peaked and it stays the market's chosen way to own AI silicon.

Left: rich vs its own history and vs the chain on most multiples — not a value bargain. Consensus already models years of data-center growth; the only variant views with edge are narrow ("does CoWoS/HBM supply cap the growth the street is modeling?" / "does custom silicon — TPU, Trainium — quietly take share?"). Must be true: capex doesn't peak, ~dominant accelerator share holds, margins hold. Breaks if: a data-center guide-down, margin compression, visible custom-silicon share loss.

Right: the leader of the AI-silicon chain, riding a whole-chain tailwind — strong on relative-strength. But anchored on the chain map, the marginal strength has migrated downstream of the headline name, to the HBM + advanced- packaging bottleneck (MU / SK Hynix / Amkor). Must be true: the AI-capex narrative persists and NVDA stays the chosen leader. Breaks if: momentum rolls over, a "capex peak" narrative takes hold, money rotates from NVDA to the laggards or out of the chain.

Priced-in: NVDA is the consensus AI trade — extremely crowded. Left+right can both hold and the edge still be thin.

Verdict: left = fair-to-rich (no left-side bargain), right = leader but crowded. The chain map's tell is that the cleaner right-side trade with less crowding may be the bottleneck names, not NVDA itself — which is the kind of call this two-sided + chain-anchored read surfaces and a single-name glance misses.