Live Indian small, micro & select mid caps

Conviction Core

One forensic-first book of Indian small, micro and select mid caps. The accounts are read for trouble before anything else, every name carries a written thesis published before the trade, and positions are held for months to years — until the thesis breaks.

Status Live Invite-only
Holdings 11 Open positions
Minimum investment ₹98,590 Live — every line ≥1 share · ₹5,00,000 recommended for tight tracking
Horizon Months → years Not a trading product

Risk of permanent capital loss. Small and micro cap equities are less liquid and more volatile than large caps. A thesis can be wrong, a position can become hard to exit at any sensible price, and you can lose part or all of the money you commit. Nothing on this page is advice or a recommendation to buy any security.

The process

Forensic first. Always.

Most research starts with the story and checks the accounts later. Core reverses it. A name is read for trouble before it is read for opportunity — and most names never make it past that first read.

01 Read for trouble

The accounts, before the story

Cash conversion against reported profit, promoter pledging, related-party flow, auditor changes, receivable and inventory build, surveillance flags. A single serious governance or liquidity finding vetoes the name outright, however good the business looks.

02 Score, don't vibe

Five pillars, scored 0–2

Business quality, management and governance, balance sheet and cash, valuation, catalyst and liquidity. Every pillar is scored against cited, fetched evidence — never recall. A number that cannot be sourced is written down as unavailable rather than guessed.

03 Publish, then act

The thesis goes out first

The written thesis — what has to be true, what size, and the pre-committed level that says the thesis has failed — is published before the order is placed. Not after the fill. Not after the price moves.

04 Hold, or break

Only two reasons to sell

The thesis breaks, or the pre-committed invalidation level is hit. Not because the position is boring, not because something else looks exciting. Filings on a held name force an immediate thesis re-check; conviction is re-scored at least once a quarter.

Why the ordering matters

Publishing the thesis first removes the option to edit the reasoning after the price moves.

Every investor believes they had a reason. Almost nobody can prove what that reason was before the outcome was known. Hindsight quietly rewrites it — the winner becomes conviction, the loser becomes bad luck.

A timestamped thesis published ahead of the trade closes that door. If a name works, the published reason is the one that worked. If it fails, the published reason is the one that failed, and the pre-committed invalidation level is there in writing alongside it. That ordering is the product's central integrity claim, and it is the one thing that cannot be retrofitted.

The book, as it stands

Composition, not performance

What follows is what the book is actually made of, and how far it sits from its own model. It is not a return record and nothing here is a projection. Where the book is off-model, the gap is shown at full size.

Live book · Model weights ·

Chart 1 of 3

Bucket weights: where the book is, against where the model says it should be

Horizontal bar chart of four buckets. Micro-cap is 2.79 per cent of the book against a 20 per cent target, 17.21 percentage points under. Small-cap is 35.00 per cent against 42.50 per cent, 7.50 points under. Mid-cap is 13.36 per cent against 27.50 per cent, 14.14 points under. Cash is 48.85 per cent against a 10 per cent target, 38.85 points over. Full figures are in the table below the chart. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Bucket Drift vs target Micro-cap 2.79% −17.21 pp Small-cap 35.00% −7.50 pp Mid-cap 13.36% −14.14 pp Cash 48.85% +38.85 pp target
Bucket weights, actual against target, live book at 16 July 2026
Bucket Actual Target Drift
Micro-cap2.79%20.00%−17.21 pp
Small-cap35.00%42.50%−7.50 pp
Mid-cap13.36%27.50%−14.14 pp
Cash48.85%10.00%+38.85 pp

Live book at 16 Jul 2026. Bucket weights are the sum of position weights in each bucket; cash is the balance. Percentages of total book value.

What this shows. Every equity bucket is under its target and cash is nearly five times its. The equity gaps are not a view on small caps — they are the arithmetic consequence of the cash position, and cash is high because the research funnel has not produced a name that clears its entry gate. This is explained in full below.

Chart 2 of 3

Every position, against its model weight

Horizontal bar chart of eleven holdings, sorted by weight. Each bar is the live weight in the book and the teal marker is the model target weight. Ten of the eleven positions sit within half a percentage point of model. The exception is ECLERX at 7.93 per cent against a 5.00 per cent model weight, 2.93 points above, because the model weight was cut on 17 July and the book has not yet been trimmed to it. All figures are in the table below. 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% Ticker Book / model WELCORP 8.18 / 8.05 ECLERX 7.93 / 5.00 SHARDAMOTR 7.41 / 7.87 GULFOILLUB 7.25 / 7.29 ACUTAAS 5.18 / 5.35 ACE 3.91 / 3.95 DHANUKA 3.53 / 3.59 DEEPINDS 2.79 / 2.88 USHAMART 2.42 / 2.45 SYRMA 1.37 / 1.36 SAKSOFT 1.18 / 1.19 model 5.00%
What this shows. The model publishes weights, never share counts, and every account tracks the same weights. Ten of eleven positions sit within 0.46 percentage points of model. The one real gap is ECLERX: the model weight was cut from 8.14% to 5.00% on 17 Jul 2026 because price appreciation had pushed the position toward the 8% single-name cap, and the book has not yet been trimmed down to it. The model moved first; the book follows.

All 11 holdings

The full book

All eleven holdings with bucket, live weight, model weight and gap
Ticker Bucket Book weight Model weight Gap
WELCORPMid8.18%8.05%+0.13 pp
ECLERXSmall7.93%5.00%+2.93 pp
SHARDAMOTRSmall7.41%7.87%−0.46 pp
GULFOILLUBSmall7.25%7.29%−0.04 pp
ACUTAASMid5.18%5.35%−0.17 pp
ACESmall3.91%3.95%−0.04 pp
DHANUKASmall3.53%3.59%−0.06 pp
DEEPINDSMicro2.79%2.88%−0.09 pp
USHAMARTSmall2.42%2.45%−0.03 pp
SYRMASmall1.37%1.36%+0.01 pp
SAKSOFTSmall1.18%1.19%−0.01 pp

Book weights: live book at 16 Jul 2026. Model weights: model portfolio at 17 Jul 2026, which implies 51.02% cash against the book's 48.85%. Holdings are disclosed, not recommended — see the disclosure at the foot of this page.

Chart 3 of 3

How conviction is spread across the book

Column chart of conviction scores across eleven holdings. Two positions score 8.0, two score 7.0, two score 6.5, one scores 6.0, one scores 5.0 and one scores 4.0. Two positions are not yet entered in the structured scoring file and are treated as a neutral default until they are scored. Figures repeated in the list below the chart. 1 2 0 Positions 1 4.0 1 5.0 1 6.0 2 6.5 2 7.0 2 8.0 2 not yet scored Conviction score, out of 10
  • 2 at 8.0 · 2 at 7.0 · 2 at 6.5
  • 1 at 6.0 · 1 at 5.0 · 1 at 4.0
  • 2 not yet scored
What this shows. Conviction is a scored judgment out of 10, not a label, and the book is deliberately not uniform — a 4.0 and a 5.0 sit alongside two 8.0s, at correspondingly different sizes. Two of the eleven were bought off full research passes but are not yet entered in the structured scoring file; the engine treats an unscored name as a neutral default and flags it, never as high conviction. That gap is the system's own open item, shown here rather than tidied away. Scores are our internal judgment on process, not a rating and not advice. Scored between 15 Jun and 6 Jul 2026, and re-scored at least once a quarter.

The honest state of the book

Half the book is in cash. That is a constraint, not a strategy.

At 16 Jul 2026 the book held 48.85% cash against a 10% target. That is not a market call, and it is not a designed allocation. It is what happens when the research funnel does not produce a name that clears its entry gate.

The mandate is explicit about this: cash above target has to be explained by a named binding constraint at every session — no qualifying idea cleared the gates, the book is already carrying its maximum open risk, liquidity fails, market conditions are hostile. Cash is never allowed to be residue. Right now the binding constraint is research supply.

The same explanation covers the bucket gaps. Micro-cap sits at 2.79% against a 20% target because micro-cap discovery names are the hardest to source and the easiest to get wrong — forensic work on that end of the market disqualifies most candidates. Mid is 13.36% against 27.5% for the same reason. Those gaps are a research-supply problem, not a weights problem, and closing them by simply buying to target would break the process the product is built on.

Idle capital is a cost too, and the system is biased toward acting on evidence, not toward sitting still. But the bar for acting is evidence, not activity. When nothing clears, nothing is bought, and the reason is written down.

What high cash means for you

  • A large part of your committed capital may sit undeployed for weeks or longer. That is a real cost, and it is the honest trade-off of an evidence-gated process.
  • Deployment happens when a name clears its gate — not on a schedule, and never to hit a target weight for its own sake.
  • Cash sits in your own broker account throughout. It is never pooled and never held by us.
On the performance record. The book has been marked daily since 2 Jul 2026 — 11 sessions at 16 Jul 2026. That is far too short a window to say anything at all about how this performs, so it is not shown here as a chart and no return figure is quoted. There is no track record to present yet, and presenting one would be dishonest.

The minimum

The minimum is computed live — share arithmetic, not sales targets

The model publishes weights. Your account has to express those weights in whole shares. The minimum investment is therefore derived, not chosen: the highest share price ÷ target weight across the model — the smallest corpus at which every line buys at least one whole share. It is recomputed with live prices on every publish. Above it you can track; for tight tracking, ₹5,00,000 is recommended — below that, whole-share rounding still distorts the smallest lines.

The arithmetic

At ₹2,00,000, one share is the whole problem

The smallest position a ₹2,00,000 account can hold in whole shares carries a 1.36% target weight. At that account size, a single share of that company is roughly 0.68% of the account — so the position lands at about 0.7% against a 1.36% target. That is a 50% tracking error on that line, and you cannot fix it: you cannot buy half a share. Three more positions miss by 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points at that size.

By contrast, a ₹10,00,000 account tracks the model within 0.2 percentage points on every line. ₹5,00,000 is where the error stops being structural. Figures from the model portfolio, 17 Jul 2026.

Minimum investment (live)₹98,590
Binding lineSYRMA — priciest share vs its weight
Recommended for tight tracking₹5,00,000
That smallest line at ₹2,00,000~0.7% vs 1.36% (≈50% off)
Tracking at ₹10,00,000within 0.2 pp
Single-name cap8%

The minimum is a technical floor on how faithfully an account can track the model. It is not a measure of who is welcome, and a larger account does not buy better research — every account tracks the identical published weights.

What can go wrong

The specific risks of this end of the market

These are not boilerplate. They are the failure modes that actually apply to a concentrated book of Indian small and micro caps, stated plainly.

Permanent loss of capital

Not a dip you wait out — capital that does not come back. A small company can lose its market, its promoter, or its accounting credibility, and the value does not return. Forensic screening lowers the odds of walking into this. It does not remove them. You can lose part or all of what you commit.

Illiquidity exactly when you want out

Small and micro cap liquidity is not constant — it evaporates in precisely the conditions that make you want to sell. A position sized comfortably against normal volume can take days to exit in a falling market, at prices well below the screen. Position size is gated on traded volume for this reason, and a name that fails the liquidity gate is passed on however good it looks.

Deep drawdowns are normal, not exceptional

A holding period measured in years means living through falls that would end a shorter strategy. The process is built to hold through price weakness while the thesis holds — which means the book is designed to sit in drawdown rather than sell out of it. If you would need this money back during one, this is the wrong place for it.

Concentration, by design

Eleven positions, with the largest at 8.18% of the book — 0.18pp above the 8% single-name cap, on price appreciation rather than on a decision to add. Drift above the cap is what forces the model weight to be cut; that is precisely what happened to ECLERX on 17 Jul. A concentrated book means individual mistakes are felt, not diluted. That is deliberate — dilution is also the enemy of conviction — but it makes single-name risk real. A single-name cap of 8% is the limit, not the aspiration.

The thesis can simply be wrong

Publishing reasoning first makes it accountable. It does not make it correct. Cited evidence can be incomplete, a management can change, an industry can turn. Each position carries a pre-committed level at which the thesis is treated as failed — that is the discipline, not a guarantee against being wrong.

Under-deployment risk

Nearly half the book is in cash today. If markets rise while the funnel stays dry, that cash earns nothing and the opportunity is gone. Waiting for evidence has a cost, and it is being paid right now.

How access works

Your broker. Your approval. Every time.

Nothing about this product involves handing over custody of your money or discretion over your account.

1

An invite code

Access is invite-only. You receive a single-use code, valid for 30 days, and redeem it in the member portal.

2

A signed agreement

A separate legal agreement is signed via DocuSign before anything starts. Terms, scope and commercials live there — not in marketing copy.

3

You connect your own broker

You keep your own broker account in your own name. Your money is never pooled with anyone else's, including ours.

4

You approve every order

When the model moves, the resulting orders for your account are presented to you first. Nothing is placed without your approval — there is no standing authority to trade on your behalf.

5

Approved orders are placed

Only after you approve are the orders placed through your connected broker's API. You can see every one of them in your own broker statement, because they are your orders.

The one thing to understand

Money never pools.

Funds sit in your own broker account, in your name, throughout. At settlement, money moves out of your account to pay for the shares you bought — exactly as it does on any trade you place yourself. What never happens is your money sitting in a common pot with other members' money, or with ours.

What you can always do

  • Decline any order presented to you, for any reason or none.
  • See every holding, weight and order in your own broker account.
  • Disconnect the broker connection and stop.

The rest of the range

Core is the one that is live

Conviction Edge

Coming soon

Derivatives.

Conviction Global

Coming soon

US-listed equity, via LRS.

Conviction Pulse

Coming soon

Systematic momentum.

Compare all four baskets

Getting in

Conviction Core is invite-only

If you have a single-use code, redeem it in the member portal. If you do not, write to us. We will send you the full process documentation and the terms, and you can decide for yourself whether Core is a fit.

Minimum investment ₹98,590 (computed live — every model line ≥1 whole share); ₹5,00,000 recommended for tight tracking. A separate agreement is signed via DocuSign before anything starts. Nothing here is advice or an offer.