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What’s Behind?
Free access to 🗓️ Quarterly Updates (Last Update: 28-Jun-2025)
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❔ Who is behind Expanse Stocks? Get to know me better
📈 Quarterly Report – News & portfolio updates
🧐 Portfolio Composition by Industry and Geography, plus Valuation Metrics.
📊 Performance Tracking: Money-weighted returns compared to key benchmarks
❎ Valuation Metrics: Tools to monitor and assess portfolio quality
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❔ Who is Expanse Stocks
I’m Diego (Twitter/X: @dcurras1, LinkedIn: diegocurras) also known as @Nikotes in the Stocktwits community—a scientist at heart, software solutions engineer by trade, and a long-time investor and swing trader by passion.
My love for science drives my analytical approach, and after eight years in the market, I’m here to share what I’ve learned.
I believe in the power of ideas, collaboration, and continuous learning. I hope you find this blog useful and, if you do, feel free to subscribe and stick around.
🧐 Portfolio Composition & Strategy
Overall Portfolio Breakdown
Last Update: 28-Jun-2025
🔹 Active Investing (100%)
High-Quality Growth Stocks (100%) – Focused on durable, fundamentally strong businesses with long-term growth potential.
High-Growth & Speculative Plays (0%) – No exposure currently; reserved for higher-risk swing trades.
🔹 Note: 2% of my portfolio is currently held as cash in a separate money market account, ready to deploy for new opportunities in 2025.
Why I Prefer an Active Investing Strategy
As both a long-term investor and occasional trader, I know how hard it is to outperform the market consistently—especially in recent years, with US indexes like SPY and QQQ delivering double-digit returns and outperforming +90% of active managers. The reality is that outpacing the market year after year is tough.
But I also believe individual investors have an edge over professionals. We don’t need to justify our performance every quarter or compare returns to benchmarks in the same way institutions do. This freedom allows us to stay patient, focus on long-term gains, and ride our investments with minimum pressure.
For me, it’s not just about returns—it’s also about staying engaged, learning from market trends, and having the freedom to explore high-quality, durable growth stocks and high-growth speculative plays that intrigue me.
📈 Quarterly Report: Q2 2025
As I returned from my Africa trip in mid-June and resumed managing my portfolio, I released my 🔗 Semi-Annual Report and took time to reassess the conviction I hold in each of my current positions.
A lot has unfolded on the macro front—again. But as I’ve said repeatedly since the start of the year, uncertainty under the new Trump administration is simply the baseline in 2025. I’m not expending energy trying to predict the next twist. Instead, I’m keeping my focus where it matters most: on the underlying businesses.
As I re-evaluated each name in my portfolio, I gained more clarity on how I want my investing stance to evolve going forward—what to double down on, and what to refine:
Double down on quality: Maintain a high-quality tilt across the portfolio, prioritizing companies with exceptional owner-operators and capital allocators.
Concentrate conviction: Trim or exit positions where conviction has weakened and positions. This approach increases focus while accepting higher volatility in exchange for higher potential returns.
B2B + recurring revenue tilt: Shift the portfolio more intentionally toward B2B businesses with high recurring revenues. I believe this will both preserve or enhance overall portfolio quality and raise its long-term IRR potential.
Reduce B2C exposure: Currently, consumer-facing businesses make up a meaningful chunk of my portfolio: B2C Discretionary and B2C Financials. Together, these represent roughly 1/3 of the portfolio.
I’m also exposed to cyclical, low-recurring-revenue businesses—around 12% of the portfolio. I plan to rebalance toward more resilient and predictable cash-flow names.
Improve Strategic AI exposure: I’m looking to diversify my strategic exposure to AI by owning high-quality, non-overlapping winners—avoiding overconcentration, while preserving high recurring revenues and quality filters.
Taking these themes into account, I’ve made several portfolio changes since releasing my semi-annual letter in mid-June.
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Portfolio Composition by Industries & Geographies
Last Update: 28-Jun-2025
I try to limit the nº of long-term holdings to 25. Currently, I own 16 names down from 18 positions at the end of Q1 2025.
For my long-term portfolio, diversification is non-negotiable.
Of course, I’m well aware of the phenomenal outperformance of U.S. equities over the past decade, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq leading the way. U.S. equities have benefited from a combination of factors: a pro-growth capitalist environment, the dominance of the dollar, investor-friendly policies, and technological leadership. Add to that, robust financial institutions and a proactive Federal Reserve, and it becomes clear why the U.S. market has outpaced much of the world (nod to China).
However, markets are inherently cyclical, and conditions may change. The chart below speaks for itself:
My portfolio weighting reflects the current reality of U.S. dominance, but markets have a habit of shifting when most people least expect it. As a long-term investor, I believe spreading investments across industries, sectors, and regions builds resilience. Diversification cushions against regional risks and taps into new growth opportunities, ensuring the portfolio remains durable through market shifts—because staying power matters as much as returns.
📊 Portfolio Performance
Last Update: 28-Jun-2025
My original portfolio dates back to November 2017, which I believe is a long enough horizon to gauge performance. I’m not the same investor and trader I was then—mistakes were made, but important lessons were learned.
I only felt completely at ease with my long-term portfolio's composition, strategy, and risk tolerance at the end of 2022, so I’ll be sharing returns from January 2023 —also coinciding with the consolidation of my entire long-term portfolio in one single broker (excluding Swing Trades, if I play them I do it on a different broker).
I use both Time-Weighted Returns and Money-Weighted Returns to measure my portfolio’s performance. Together, they provide a more complete picture.
I go into more details about this approach in my article: 📎 Calculating Portfolio Returns & Why Investing is Personal
Note: Returns shown by Interactive Brokers are calculated in EUR and may be affected by FX volatility.
While YTD or Monthly returns are commonly shared by many, they can be misleading for assessing long-term returns. I consider at least a 5-years horizon is more appropriate for evaluation. The compounding effect means that past performance significantly impacts our overall return, making longer-term perspectives more revealing.
I am quite satisfied with my portfolio returns so far, but it's definitely too early to evaluate long-term performance.
✖ Valuation Metrics
Last Update: 28-Jun-2025
Here are key metrics of my current Portfolio I use to monitor and assess its quality:
Growth & Durability ✅
Double digits forward EPS growth
Double digits top line and EPS CARG (3y-avg and 5y-avg)
Standout Margins & Operational Excellence ✅
Operating margin >25% and EBITDA margin >30%
High FCF Margins >20% and Net Profit Margin around 20%
Capital Efficiency ✅
High Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) >15% and high ROCE > 20%, indicating an efficient use of invested funds to generate profitable returns
FCF Conversion > 100%, showing high efficiency to turn profits into actual cash flow
Financial Sustainability
Fwd. FCF Yield - indicating ability to generate cash and sustain operations - at 3.12%. A bit low currently as some of my heavy-weighted companies are richly valued and going through a high Capex cycle 🟡
Positive Forward P/E, EV/FCF and EV/OCF, although currently trending at a relatively high multiple 🟡
Low Leverage, Low Dilution ✅
Net Debt/EBITDA < 1, reflecting ability to manage debt and a good financial health
Total Debt against Capitalization around 30%, below the +50% ratio of the S&P 500 index constituents.
Shares Outstanding Growth of the overall Portfolio is virtually at 0%. Dilution is minimal which is key as a long-term shareholder.
📌 NOTE: Some positions in my long-term portfolio are growth companies or have non-normalized earnings, which can distort valuation multiples.
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📊 Valuation Tools – DCF, reverse DCF, capital efficiency & growth models
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