Please note that this week we held our July Open Forum, where we discussed developments across our coverage universe during the month of June. Part of the discussion focused on a new and potentially very exciting idea discovery.
During the Planet MicroCap Conference in Las Vegas, I pitched $SIF. This is very much a classic “boring but interesting” turnaround idea in the aerospace forging space. SIFCO is a 113-year-old aerospace supplier with established certifications, long-standing customer relationships, and a solid competitive position in both commercial and defense aerospace markets, but one that spent more than a decade in operational decline before recently starting to inflect. In this week’s Skull Session with Hugo Navarro, we discussed how he will balance his new career advising a hedge fund while continuing to write deep-dive research reports on his Substack, as well as four of his favorite investment pitches.
We opened this Skull Session by catching up with Hugo Navarro (@HugoNavarroPer2) after meeting him in person at Planet MicroCap Las Vegas. Hugo discussed his move into advising a fund in Spain while continuing to publish on Substack, where he focuses on undercovered small-cap ideas.
Hugo described his approach as both bottom-up and top-down, with a focus on cheap companies that often trade below five times free cash flow and still have growth optionality. He also explained how sharing research online helped him build relationships with fund managers, gain access to management teams, and eventually move into fund advising.
Every year, microcap conferences introduce investors to dozens of promising companies. Yet, once the conference ends, there is rarely a structured way to measure which investment ideas actually performed the best.
The 2026 Microcap Stock Picking Contest will help track which investment ideas actually outperform and discover some great investors.
The contest gives investors an opportunity to test their stock-picking skills over a defined period while adding a little friendly competition to the microcap investing community. Top performers earn recognition for consistently identifying winning ideas.
The 2026 contest series features more than $15,000 in total cash prizes and bonuses across three separate competitions. Contest 1, focused on Planet MicroCap Las Vegas 2026, is now accepting submissions and offers a $5,000 prize pool + bonus prizes.
Lots of people think successful investing is about certainty but this Skull Session with Deiya Pernas of Pernas Research sits in uncertainty where information quality, narrative gaps, market inefficiencies, and disciplined analysis can drive better decisions than prediction. The discussion also covers how AI is reshaping software narratives, why less-followed and sometimes illiquid names can still create opportunity, and how the brothers think about businesses in terms of whether the underlying “motor” of a business is getting stronger or weaker. During my chat with Dean, we talked about motor investing. So it was nice to get Deiya’s point of view on this subject.
This Skull Session featured Deiya Pernas, an investor at Pernas Research, for a conversation on investing process, information arbitrage, AI, portfolio construction, and small-cap opportunities. The discussion opened with Deiya’s path into investing, shaped by poker, understanding, probabilities, emotional control, and decision-making under incomplete information.
Last week was a strong week of Skull Sessions. We welcomed back recurring guests, hedge fund manager Sean Westropp of Deepsail Capital and attorney John Sutter, to discuss the state of the short selling market and the conviction of Andrew Left, who was recently convicted of securities fraud in connection with a roughly $21 million stock market manipulation scheme and now faces up to 25 years in prison, with sentencing still pending. Whether you’re a professional or a casual investor, this case could have implications for how you interact on social media and how you approach writing and commentary when discussing stocks you like or dislike.
This Skull Session builds on the short selling theme with John Sutter, Esq., who joined us to unpack the Andrew Left conviction. John has worked with whistleblowers and short activists and now spends much of his practice helping financial market participants reduce legal risk.