Through-cycle equity research.

Finance MBA, passed Level I of the CFA Program, 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
• 2025 Passed Level I of the CFA Program
• 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: brandon@bpleon.com.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brandonpleon.