About Contra Research Group

Who we are

Contra Research Group is a collective of independent retail and former professional traders who come from all walks of life. We are not one analyst working alone, and we are not a bank. What holds the group together is a shared discipline: every name we cover goes through the same process a professional desk would run, whether the person running it spent a career on a trading floor or built that judgment independently, on their own capital, over years in the market.

That mix is deliberate. Professional experience brings the rigor of institutional process. Independent traders bring the willingness to go where a bank's own book, client relationships and coverage universe would never let it look: into micro caps with going-concern flags, into the insurance layer beneath a technology story, into the board minutes behind a takeover thesis. We publish what that combination finds.

Methodology

Every published note is the record of that process as it ran.

01. Teardown

We read the filings, transcripts and primary data the way an acquirer would read a target: unit economics, capital structure, ownership and 13F flow, board composition and the deal history behind it, the catalyst calendar, and the balance-sheet runway. Nothing is concluded at this stage. The output is an inventory of what is verifiably true about the business, unglamorous as most of it turns out to be.

02. Cross-reference

A company does not exist in isolation. We map it against its suppliers, its customers and the competitors chasing the same demand, because the leverage in a story is rarely inside the ticker itself. It is in who else touches the same chain, and on what terms. Single-company views tend to come apart here, which is why we run the stage at all.

03. Bottleneck analysis

Every sector has a choke point: a constraint in delivery, manufacturing, capital, regulation or liability that gates the outcome regardless of which named competitor wins a given contract or trial. We isolate that constraint and ask who owns it, because the owner of a bottleneck monetizes the theme even when the market misjudges which single company comes out ahead.

04. Synthesis

The note closes with a ranked view: a framework stance, a risk assessment with severity attached to each item, and, where the theme has legs beyond one binary event, an allocation map across the vehicles that actually own the constraint. We also publish an analyst agenda, listing the open questions we consider the next highest-value work.

What we are, and what we are not

Contra Research Group is an independent research group operating in the finance sector. We are not a bank, a broker-dealer, or a registered investment adviser, and nothing we publish is institutional broker research. Our notes are analytical commentary compiled from public sources and are provided for informational purposes to our readers. They are not investment advice, a recommendation, an offer, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security.

Framework stances (Trade, Constructive, Neutral and Speculative) are internal analytical constructs, not regulated investment ratings. Figures drawn from filings, exchanges and third-party data providers are reported on a settlement or filing lag and are subject to revision. Recipients should conduct independent diligence and consult a licensed professional before acting on anything we publish.

Disclosures

Securities referenced in our research carry material risk of loss, and in the case of micro-capitalization names with going-concern warnings, a risk of total loss. Contra Research Group and its personnel hold positions in some of the securities we cover, including positions opened before a note publishes. Each note states its own position status, as set out under we hold what we cover above. Short interest, ownership and financial data are reported on a settlement or filing lag. Illustrative valuation figures published in our notes are scenario constructs set out to be challenged. They are not price targets or forecasts.

Where we stand on what we cover

Most of what we publish is work on companies we are watching and studying, and we hold no position in them. Coverage is not a signal that we own something. Where we do hold a position we say so on the note, because that is not something a reader should have to guess at.

Every note states our position in the name it covers, directly under its framework stance. Where we hold one, that block gives the direction, when the position was opened and our average cost. Where we hold none, the note says so in the same place. Every note states one or the other, so the absence of a disclosure never has to be interpreted.

This applies to every note we have published, not only new ones. If anything here is unclear on a specific name, ask the desk and we will tell you.

A position is not a recommendation and it is not the framework stance. A stance describes the shape of the risk and reward we see at a stated horizon. A position is our own money, sized to our own circumstances, which are not yours. The two are published separately so neither can be mistaken for the other.

How we trade what we cover

We are traders who publish, not a compliance department, so this is short and it is accurate.

• We are not invested in most of what we cover. Coverage means we did the work on a name, not that we own it. As things stand we hold one position across our published coverage, and that note discloses it. A note we have closed out of keeps its disclosure, showing the terms we held and how the position ended, because we held it while the note was live.
• Each disclosure gives the entry date and our average cost, stated as at the date shown on the block.
• We trade actively. We may add to, reduce or close a disclosed position at any time, including soon after publishing. The figures on a note are accurate as at their stated date. They are not a commitment to keep holding, and you should not read them as one.
• We update the disclosure when anything changes, as a dated entry on that note. That covers adding, reducing, exiting, and opening a position in a name we have already published on.
• We publish what we did, not what we made. Every disclosure gives the instrument, the dates and the prices, on the way in and on the way out. We do not publish a return figure on any position, and we will not start on a winner. We do not publish position sizes, we have no aggregate record to set a single number against, and one trade's percentage is not a track record. The dates and the prices are all there. Anyone who wants the arithmetic can do it, and will know exactly what it is worth.
• Nobody pays us to publish. We take no compensation from any company we cover or from any third party for writing about it. If that ever changes it will be disclosed on the note before anything else.

Revised twice on 12 September 2026, and both changes are recorded here rather than made quietly. The first version carried a 48 hour trading blackout around publication. The second said that every position we hold is opened before the note on it publishes. Neither described how we actually work: the blackout was written for a desk that publishes before it buys, and the sequencing rule turned one fact about one holding into a policy. Extended on 20 September 2026, on closing our first disclosed position, with the rule on reporting returns. We wrote that entry with the percentage in it, read it back, and took the number out: it was the one thing on the page doing no analytical work, and the first result a shop publishes sets what it is in the business of selling. What stands above is what we do.