Patience, Discipline, Humility, and Democratizing the World of Investment Research

"Where are the customers' yachts?"

The retail investing boom has created both opportunities and pitfalls for everyday investors. While platforms like Robinhood and TD Ameritrade have made trading accessible to millions, there's still a massive gap between the quality of research available to institutional investors and what individual investors can access affordably.

Enter Gregory Blotnick, a seasoned investor who started his hedge fund career in 2009. In 2019, Blotnick went off on his own to launch Brattle Street Capital, a long/short equity fund in New York. Now, he's got his eye on something different as he builds out Valiant Research LLC, an independent research firm providing market intelligence and analytics to institutions and individual investors alike.

The Problem with Today's Investment Landscape

Walk into any bookstore and you'll find dozens of investing books promising to make you rich quick. Turn on the dummy box - known to most as CNBC - and you'll hear endless stock picks and market predictions from the same guys who have been dead wrong every single day this month. Browse social media and the song remains the same.

But what Blotnick has learned is that most of this content comes from people who've never actually invested in a professional capacity. They're selling advice without having skin in the game, without any accountability for their recommendations, and without any form of education; either formal schooling, or the far more valuable informal kind, earned by paying your dues to the market for years, if not decades on end.

"The market has been flooded with misinformation and self-proclaimed experts who are making it up as they go along," Blotnick explains. "Retail investors are overpaying for advice given by unqualified individuals, and as a result, they're ending up worse off than if they had done nothing at all."

Building a Bridge Between Two Worlds

Valiant Research represents Blotnick's attempt to level the playing field. Rather than offering hot stock tips or trendy trading strategies, the firm focuses on something more sustainable: teaching investors how to think like professionals.

“It has always felt to me like professional investors believe they're too good to stop and teach what they know to a group of individuals that is sorely in need," Blotnick says. "This creates a gap in the market, and that gap ends up getting filled by self-proclaimed experts with no credentials or pedigree.”

Despite having spent his career in finance, Blotnick is no fan of Wall Street. After graduating from Lehigh University in 2009, he started as an analyst at Doubloon Capital, a hedge fund founded by Tom Hudson of Pirate Capital. He later joined Exis Capital under well-known investor Adam Sender, then earned his MBA from Columbia Business School. In 2017, Citadel recruited Blotnick to join a team managing north of $1B in Consumer & Retail equities. But despite his time spent in the institutional world, Blotnick has always been amazed at how retail financial advisors treat individual investors.

"The hard truth is that 99% of this industry exists to screw mom-and-pop investors who don't know any better," Blotnick says. "It's less flagrant than it used to be, but the advisory model still amounts to little more than a wealth transfer just about everywhere you look; first through the fees paid directly to the advisor, and second, through high-cost, poor-performing products that the advisor is compensated for recommending. There's only one way out, and it's through education."

Investment Philosophy

At the heart of Valiant Research lies what Blotnick calls the "Three Pillars" of successful investing, principles he developed through both victories and painful mistakes during his career. Those three pillars are Discipline, Patience, and Humility.

"Every major mistake I've made in my career could be traced back to violating one of those three principles," Blotnick reflects. "They comprise the bedrock of the firm's research and client education process."

Unlike traditional investment newsletters or advisory services, Valiant Research isn't trying to create dependency. In fact, the goal is the opposite.

"In my mind, the absolute home-run scenario is that someone works with us for a year or two and then leaves, disciplined, self-reliant, and confident enough in their process that they'll never need to deal with Wall Street ever again."

"That's the dream. It's the dream for them, to be financially independent and free, and the dream for me in helping to make a permanent positive impact on someone else's life."

For more information on Valiant Research, visit Gregory Blotnick's homepage.