About the blog
If you have made it this far, chances are you are looking for the same thing I was looking for in 2017: a pragmatic, analytical way of understanding the markets, with no magic formulas and no promises of getting rich quickly.
The name of this blog is no accident. Siso, in Portuguese, is good sense, which in the markets means deciding on solid grounds, and not on impulse or on a tip overheard in some group.
The expression «ter siso», to have siso, has been around for a while. The word is also the Portuguese name for the wisdom tooth, and it used to be believed that the arrival of that tooth coincided with the moment a person left the irresponsibility of childhood behind and gained good sense — gained siso.
It is funny that, as a rule, people are willing to lose hours and hours comparing the specifications of household appliances, phones, whatever it may be. And in the markets I see them investing their money with little judgement and little homework (sometimes amounts well above what they spend on the electronics).
I feel that in investing, especially on the stock market, and at the risk of generalising, we need to have more siso. I hope I can contribute something towards that in this space.
Who I am
My name is Ricardo. I discovered a passion for the financial markets in 2017, the year I finished my master’s at the Portuguese Naval Academy and began a career as a Navy officer. In 2025 I traded the military career for one in cybersecurity.
Since 2017 I have been studying on my own, consistently, the fundamental and technical analysis of listed companies.
I am not a fund manager or a financial guru, and I do not sell illusions of getting rich quickly. I am a retail investor who devotes hundreds of hours to annual reports and accounts, economic data and market trends, and who writes here the conclusions I draw from them.
Why I created this blog
Over these years, and especially over the last three or four, I shared my analyses, investment theses and readings of the market informally, with friends and acquaintances. The answer was always the same: the reasoned, structured way in which I approached the markets gave them something they were not finding in the usual financial content.
It was at their suggestion that I created this space.
My aim is simple: to share transparently the analytical process, the readings of the market and the methodologies I use day to day as an investor.
What you will find here
- Fundamental analyses — valuing companies, sectors and commodities through financial metrics and projections of the future.
- Technical analyses — reading price structures, assessing trends, technical indicators and projections of the future.
- Risk management and mindset — market psychology and the preservation of capital.
In all three, it is not only the conclusion but also the reasoning. A conclusion without the path that led to it is a guess. It is the path that allows discussion, verification and learning. And I hope that, through my explanations, I can contribute some value to the reader.
My methodology
Personally, and contrary to the advice given on the internet, I do not restrict myself to a single sector or type of company. I am always searching, and I stop when I find something that looks to me like it «has legs». As for limits, I would say my only limit is that, although I have done it in the past, I avoid investing in derivative financial products (options, CFDs, warrants, and so on). I have learnt from experience that what works best for me is the traditional, non-derivative equity market, partly as a matter of risk management. Options can work as a good hedge to an equity position, but this is not the place to go into that.
My method always starts with the same question: is this company trading below what I consider to be its intrinsic value?
To get there, I cross macroeconomic data with the metrics the company itself reports in its annual report and accounts — the P/E ratio (the price against earnings), the PEG (that same P/E, adjusted for the pace of growth), Debt/EBITDA (how many years of operating profit it would take to pay off the debt), the P/S (the price against sales), among others. These are the indicators I use to choose where I invest, and they are also the ones I intend to explain here, one by one.
The metrics change with the sector. Debt/EBITDA says a lot about an industrial company and almost nothing about a bank, where liabilities are the raw material of the business itself. Each type of company is measured by whatever makes sense for it. And I do not restrict myself to the sectors I already know. Given the time and the patience, I study whatever is needed to understand how that business is measured. I like learning.
The intrinsic value I work out is a judgement, not the result of a formula. It weighs the debt the company carries, the peers in its sector and the macroeconomic data of the moment.
Above all, it also weighs what has not happened yet. Markets normally act in anticipation, and share prices have already taken in expectations about the future: the future of the sector, where the macroeconomic indicators are heading, and what the company itself projects for itself, called guidance, meaning the forecasts management publishes about its own future performance.
What I look for in that screening is not a good company. I look for a good deal, and for me this difference is essential. And I think less seasoned investors (the ones with less siso) do not properly grasp the distinction. It is preferable, in my view, to buy a mediocre company at a low price than an excellent company at an expensive one. A good company bought expensively can make a bad investment for years, because the price you pay is part of the quality of the decision.
Once the company is chosen, I move on to the technical analysis, and I use it for one concrete thing: setting entry and exit points and managing the risk of the position. Reading charts does not tell me whether a company «has legs», but rather when and at what price I get into it, whether I should add to or reduce the position, and where I get out if I have got it wrong. For this part I use the TradingView platform.
To cut a long story short, this is what investing is. Making decisions with siso, and taking advantage of the inefficiencies the market hands us from time to time.
Facts and opinions. The numbers I publish come from the companies’ own reports and accounts, and I always cite the source, so that any reader can check them independently. Everything else, which is to say the reading I make of those numbers, the value I assign to the company, the thesis, is my opinion, and I write it as such.
What I do not do here
I do not give personalised investment recommendations. I publish my analysis and my opinion about companies. What each reader should do with their money depends on their own situation, and answering that would be a regulated activity, requiring registration with the CMVM. See the legal notice.
I do not write about companies with which I have any professional relationship.
Obviously, I do not silently delete or rewrite analyses that have aged badly. Being wrong in public is part of thinking in public.
Positions and conflicts of interest
I often write about companies I hold, and not by accident. They are the ones I follow most closely, whose reports I read every quarter, and about which I have the most to say. But I also analyse companies I do not hold. It is part of the screening process I mentioned earlier.
This is, at one and the same time, the greatest advantage and the greatest conflict of interest of this blog, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Whoever writes about a company they hold has, by definition, an interest in it being read well. That is why that information is declared at the end of every analysis, automatically and without exception, including when I hold no position at all. It is the information you need in order to know how to read what I wrote.