The system, in plain words

How this works

The cockpit answers two questions each morning: is it time to acquire land at auction, and is any Thai stock a buy? It’s a patient buyer’s tool, not a trading screen. Read this once and the whole page becomes obvious.

The idea, in one minute

The edge is land within three hours of home. Stocks are the second bucket — where land profits wait patiently until a great Thai business goes on sale in a panic.

Two beliefs drive everything here. First: prices come back to their average. When fear pushes a good company far below what it’s worth, that gap tends to close. Second: follow the incentives. Before trusting any number, ask who gets paid and whether their payday depends on the business doing well or just on me believing it will. A cheap price is only a bargain if the business behind it is real.

So this tool does two jobs: it tells you where we are in the weather (the whole market — calm or storming), and it keeps a short list of good businesses with a pre-agreed price at which they’d be worth buying. Most days the answer is “wait.” Waiting well is the whole game.

The one rule: no computable value = no margin of safety = no position. If you can’t say what a thing is worth, you don’t buy it — no matter how good the story sounds.

Reading the Land & Credit Cycle (top of the page)

The top block of the cockpit is about your real edge: buying land at auction. It runs on a simple chain of incentives — debt stress today becomes cheap land tomorrow. When households and businesses over-borrow, some stop paying; those loans go bad; banks foreclose; and the seized land reaches the government’s auction house (the LED / กรมบังคับคดี) 1–2 years later. So the best moment for a cash buyer is not when things feel good — it’s when credit is tight, sellers are motivated, and your leveraged competitors can’t get funded.

The cycle bar marks where the land market sits: Fire-sale → Buyer’s → Balanced → Seller’s → Frothy. The acquisition window is the land version of the panic window — OPEN when supply is high and competition is starved, CLOSED when everyone’s bidding and prices are frothy.

Two gauges, not one. Beside the acquisition (buy) window sits an exit window — because your resale can freeze exactly when lots are cheapest (it did for years after 1997). A green buy side means nothing if the sell side is shut. And a foreclosure-policy tile watches the thing that breaks the whole model: a government debt-moratorium or auction suspension (as in 2020) that halts the supply of distressed lots even at peak distress.

The tiles split in two. “Credit & distress” is your supply pipeline — household debt, bad loans, how frozen lending is, and the policy rate. “Land market” is your entry and exit — land prices in your regions, how many homes are actually changing hands, new supply, and the transaction-fee break. Colors follow the same buyer’s-seat logic: green = good for you as a cash acquirer, red = a headwind (usually on the exit side).

The one thing to remember: right now the buy side is wide open, but the exit — your lower-middle-income resale buyer — is the bottleneck. Win the lots you can underwrite conservatively, not every lot. And these are national numbers; your specific Saraburi/Korat plot and the specific auction lot always matter more.

The equities section, part by part

The watchlist has three stacked sections. Top to bottom, they go from the whole market down to the single stock.

1 · Market Vitals — the ICU monitor

Think of the market like a patient hooked up to monitors. This strip shows the vital signs so you know if it’s healthy, feverish, or crashing — without reading the news.

The cycle bar shows where we are in the long weather pattern: Trough → Recovery → Expansion → Peak/Late → Contraction. A marker sits on today’s phase. Late/Peak means expensive and complacent — a time to hold cash, not chase.

The panic window is the single most important line. It opens on the worse of two alarms: US fear (the VIX) or Thai-native stress — how far Thai shares have fallen from their 52-week high, plus a weak baht — so a Bangkok-only selloff can’t hide behind a calm Wall Street (the fix for 2013, when the SET fell 23% while the VIX never moved). When both are calm the window is CLOSED and you wait; when either rings it OPENS. It also shows a scale-in ladder: deploy in lots as stress deepens, never all-in on the first OPEN — because “open” is rarely the exact bottom (2008 fell ~30% more after the VIX first spiked).

The vitals tiles are the dials that move the market: interest rates (US and Thai), the baht, bond yields, gold, and oil. Each has a plain one-line meaning. Crucially, the colors are read from your seat as a cash buyer — not the market’s. A weak baht or a fear spike shows green here, because that’s when your discount forms. See the colors below.

2 · What needs attention

A short summary box that pulls out only the stocks doing something today — one in its buy zone, one gone too expensive, one whose story is breaking. If it says “No action — keep waiting,” that is a complete and correct answer. Close the page and go have coffee.

3 · The watchlist — by bucket, not by size

The list is grouped the way you actually decide — by purpose, matching your doctrine that only three buckets exist: Income (own for the yield — your held infra funds, fat-payout names, and banks), Monopolists (dominant franchises, buy only in a panic), and Value survivors (net-cash industrials waiting for a pullback). Cap size is now just a small label on each row. Each stock shows the same things:

Enter / Exit / Now. Three prices side by side. Enter is the price at or below which it’s worth buying. Exit (or Trim) is where it’s gotten expensive enough to lighten up. Now is the live price — painted green when it’s in the buy zone, red when it isn’t. Under it, “+18% vs buy” tells you how far the price still has to fall to reach your entry.

The flag (the colored dot) is the quick glance: 🟢 buy zone, 🟡 expensive/trim, 🔴 avoid or thesis breaking, just waiting.

The yield chip shows the live dividend yield — the cash the company pays you each year as a percent of today’s price. Green means fat (8%+), gold means decent (4%+), grey means thin.

The STOP line is the honest part: what would prove the idea wrong. If that thing happens, you leave — no arguing with yourself later.

The confidence tag tells you how hard I’ve checked it:

forensic Full deep dive done — I counted every share, stripped one-off gains, valued the pieces, and took a haircut for governance. Highest trust.

mono A Thai near-monopoly — a business so dominant it’s hard to unseat. Buy these in a panic.

screen Passed the survival screen (net cash, real free cash flow, liquid enough) but hasn’t had the full forensic yet. Provisional — treat the level as a placeholder.

fin A bank or financial — judged on a different gate (capital, bad loans, coverage, ROE, price-to-book, dividend durability), because you can’t net-cash a balance sheet that is leverage.

held Something you already own for yield (DIF, 3BBIF) — shown to watch, marked “no add” (a melting ice cube).

The full inclusion / exclusion rules for each tag are in the next section.

How a stock earns its tag (and loses it)

Every name carries one tag: forensic, mono, or screen. Here is exactly what puts a stock in each box — and what takes it out. From now on, every time the morning brief adds, drops, promotes, or downgrades a name, it names the box and the exact line below that tripped it — nothing moves silently.

First, the gate everyone must pass

Before a stock is even considered, it has to be able to survive a bad year without going bust or quietly printing new shares that shrink your slice:

INNet cash or very low debt · current ratio ≥ ~1.5 (can pay its short-term bills) · positive free cash flow · liquid enough that your ฿500K–฿1M ticket can get in and out (roughly ฿5M+ traded a day) · a clean, countable share structure.
OUTFails any of these badly — too much debt, burns cash, can’t cover near-term bills, too illiquid to exit, or a share count muddied by warrants you can’t measure. It never makes the list. This exclusion comes before all the others.

forensic — full deep dive, highest trust

INThe full Step 0–7 has been run and produced a computable value per fully-diluted share: every share counted, one-off gains stripped back to recurring profit, the parts valued, debt and insider/related-party leaks subtracted, a 0–40% governance haircut applied — and a real margin of safety exists at the ENTER price.
OUTThe value can’t be computed (then it can only be a “screen”), the deep dive shows the price already at or above fair value with no cushion, or governance is too dirty to trust the numbers. A broken STOP drops it.

mono — a dominant franchise, bought in panic

INA structurally dominant Thai business with a durable moat that’s very hard to unseat — a network, a licence or concession, or sheer brand scale (7-Eleven’s footprint, an airport, an expressway, the leading hospital or mall group). Valued on quality plus a panic discount, not deep-value forensic. You buy when fear marks it down, not at fair value.
OUTThe moat actually cracks — real competition arrives, or a concession renewal turns against it — or money leaking to insiders (related-party deals) becomes the main story. No genuine franchise = not a mono.

screen — passed the gate, not yet forensic (provisional)

INClears the survival gate and looks cheap or high-quality on the headline numbers, but hasn’t had the full Step 0–7 yet. The ENTER / EXIT levels are placeholders — a starting point, not a verdict.
OUTOnce the forensic is run it graduates to “forensic” (or is dropped if the deep dive disappoints); it leaves the list if survival later fails or liquidity gets too thin for your ticket. Always size a “screen” name smaller — the level is provisional.

fin — a bank / financial, on its own gate

INStrong capital (CAR ~18%+, well above the ~11% floor) · contained bad loans (NPL ≤ ~4%) with heavy provision coverage (≥ ~120%) · durable ROE (≥ ~10%) · a fair price on book value and a covered, sustainable dividend · an owner whose incentive is stability/dividends, not policy lending.
OUTRising NPLs / thinning coverage, a payout not covered by earnings, a state owner that can direct policy lending over your return (why KTB is out), or a price so far above book the yield no longer pays you for the risk. Never valued with net-cash or Step 0–7 — a bank is leverage.

Nothing enters or leaves silently. When a name is added, the brief states its tag, the inclusion line it ticked, and confirms the data was verified across two sources first. When a name is dropped or downgraded, it names the exact exclusion line that tripped it — and the stock isn’t deleted, it moves to the bottom (“once-attractive, parked”) so you keep the memory. Ten names max per cap tier.

The forensic, step by step (Step 0–7)

When a name wears the forensic tag, this is the eight-step teardown it passed. It rests on one idea: a price is only cheap if the business behind it is real, and the people running it will actually let you share in the value.

Step 0 · Count every share. Get the TRUE share count — all shares that exist plus every warrant, option and private-placement mandate that could become shares later. Your slice is what matters; a company that keeps printing new shares quietly shrinks you. The tell: is management paid per share (an owner) or per piece of paper printed (a promoter)?

Step 1 · Strip earnings to the recurring core. Throw out one-off gains — asset sales, revaluations, FX flukes — and keep only the profit the business earns repeatably. Ask who benefits from this quarter looking good now: a one-time gain that lands just as they’re about to raise money is a flag, not a feature.

Step 2 · Value the pieces separately. Add up what each part is worth on its own — a depleting asset (a mine, a lease) as a countdown to zero minus cleanup; a service arm at a normal profit margin; a stake in another listed firm at market value minus a discount. Check who owns each part: if minorities own a slice of a subsidiary, that value isn’t fully yours. Compare the whole empire (consolidated) with what you’d actually own (company-only).

Step 3 · Hunt the leaks. Find value draining out the back door: loans to insiders (related-party), unexplained “investments,” cash trapped in subsidiaries, and under-provisioning (not setting enough aside for bad debts or future costs). A low price means nothing if value leaks out faster than it compounds.

Step 4 · Assemble the number. Parts + the cash that’s genuinely yours − debt − hidden liabilities, all ÷ the fully-diluted share count from Step 0. That’s the raw value per share, before judgment.

Step 5 · Governance haircut (0–40%). Cut that value by up to 40% based on the ten-year record of how management has treated minority owners. The long chart is the fossil record of incentives — a decade of behaviour tells you whether they’ll share the value or keep it.

Step 6 · Pick the discount rate. The rate you discount the future by is your pay for entering their incentive structure: ~9% for aligned, liquid large caps; 12–14% when you might be the “exit liquidity” (the buyer they offload to). The government bond yield (~3%) is only a floor check — never the rate you actually use.

Step 7 · Three scenarios (bear / base / bull). Model outcomes with mean reversion: for a no-moat business, fade its returns and payout back toward long-run norms (good times don’t last); hold earnings fixed only if a real moat justifies it. The gap between your value and today’s price, across all three, is your margin of safety.

A name earns “forensic” only if all eight pass and a real margin of safety survives at the ENTER price. If the value won’t compute, it can’t be forensic — it stays a provisional “screen,” or it stays off the list.

The one thing this method can’t touch: banks & insurers. You can’t net-cash or sum-the-parts a balance sheet that is leverage — a bank’s whole product is debt, so it has no “net cash” and fails the survival gate by design. Financials need their own gate: capital adequacy (CAR), bad-loan ratio (NPL), provision coverage, return on equity, price-to-book, and dividend durability. That’s why no bank is on the list yet — a framework limit, not an oversight.

The colors, decoded

Every color on this site is read from a cash buyer’s chair. Green is not “the market is up” — green is “good for you.” That’s why fear and a weak baht turn green: they build your discount.

🟢 GreenA tailwind or an opportunity for you. A stock in its buy zone; a fear spike; a cheap baht. Lean in.
🟡 YellowNeutral or getting rich. At/above the trim price, or priced for perfection. Pay attention, don’t chase.
🔴 RedA headwind, or a stock that isn’t a buy / whose story is breaking. Wait, or stay away.
⚪ GreyNothing happening. On the list, just waiting for its price. The normal state.

How to read it each morning

The whole ritual is about two minutes with your coffee.

  1. Glance at the panic window. Closed? Then nothing is cheap — you’re done, go enjoy the morning. Opening or open? Keep reading, this is the rare day that matters.
  2. Read “What needs attention.” If it says keep waiting, believe it. If a name is flagged green, that’s a stock at your pre-agreed buy price — the moment you prepared for.
  3. Only then look at the flagged stock. Re-read its STOP line and confidence tag. Forensic + in buy zone + panic window open = the setup. Size it small, keep your cash floor, and remember the real edge is still land.

The question to ask yourself: not “what if this works?” but “what if I’m wrong?” The prize for perfect analysis of a bad asset is zero baht. If nothing’s obvious, that’s not a problem to solve — it’s the answer.

Every abbreviation, spelled out

If a short word appears anywhere on the site, its full meaning is here.

The page & the market
SETStock Exchange of Thailand — the main Thai stock market, and its headline index.
SET50The index of the 50 biggest, most-traded companies on the SET.
maiMarket for Alternative Investment — the SET’s board for smaller, growing companies.
Market capMarket capitalisation — the whole company’s price tag (share price × number of shares). It’s how we sort small / mid / big.
EnterThe price at or below which a stock is worth buying — your pre-agreed entry.
Exit / TrimThe price where a stock has gotten expensive enough to sell some and take profit.
STOPThe thing that would prove the idea wrong — if it happens, you leave.
TickerA company’s short code on the exchange (e.g. AOT = Airports of Thailand).
Money & value terms
P/EPrice-to-Earnings — how many years of current profit you’re paying for the stock. Lower is cheaper. “Fwd P/E” uses next year’s expected profit.
FCFFree Cash Flow — the real cash left over after the business pays for everything it needs to keep running. The cash that can actually reach you.
CRCurrent Ratio — short-term assets divided by short-term bills. Above ~1.5 means it can comfortably pay what’s due. A survival check.
Net cashCash on hand minus all debt. “Net cash” = more cash than debt — a fortress balance sheet.
Ex-cashThe price you’re paying for the actual business once you subtract the cash it’s sitting on. “Ex-cash ~4×” means the operating business is dirt cheap.
dpsDividend Per Share — the baht each share pays out in a year.
Yield / yldDividend yield — the yearly dividend as a percent of today’s price. ฿1 paid on a ฿20 stock = 5% yield.
PayoutThe share of profit paid out as dividends. “Payout > earnings” is a warning — paying more than it earns can’t last.
ROEReturn on Equity — profit as a percent of owners’ money in the business. How hard the company’s capital works.
P/BV · book valueBook value = net worth per share (assets − liabilities). Price-to-book (P/BV) compares the price to that; below 1.0× = trading under net worth — the main value gauge for a bank.
CARCapital Adequacy Ratio — a bank’s safety buffer (capital vs. risk-weighted loans). Higher = more shock-proof; ~18% is strong vs. the ~11% regulatory floor.
NPL coverageHow much a bank has reserved against its bad loans. ≥120% = over-provisioned, a cushion if the credit cycle worsens.
SOTPSum Of The Parts — valuing a company by adding up its pieces separately, instead of as one lump.
Diluted sharesThe true, full share count — including every warrant and option that could turn into new shares later and shrink your slice.
PPPrivate Placement — a company selling new shares to a chosen buyer. Watch it: it can quietly dilute you.
Related-partyDeals or loans between a company and its own insiders/affiliates. A place value can leak out — check who benefits.
DCADollar-Cost Averaging — buying a fixed amount on a schedule instead of all at once, to smooth out the price.
EMEmerging Markets — developing economies like Thailand. Money flows into them when big-country (US) rates fall.
YoY / YTDYear-over-Year (vs the same time last year) · Year-To-Date (since Jan 1 this year).
REITReal Estate Investment Trust — a listed fund that owns income property and passes the rent to holders. (Same family as the infrastructure funds below.)
The macro dials (Market Vitals)
FedThe US Federal Reserve — America’s central bank. Its interest rate sets the tide for money worldwide. Cuts = tailwind for Thailand.
BoTBank of Thailand — the Thai central bank. Its rate sets the cost of credit for your land buyers.
10Y / bond yieldThe interest on a 10-year government bond — the “safe” return everything else is measured against. High yields make stocks less tempting.
VIXThe Volatility Index — Wall Street’s “fear gauge.” Low = calm and expensive; high (25–30+) = panic. One of two triggers for the buy window (the other is Thai stress).
Drawdown / 52-wk highHow far a price has fallen from its highest point in the past year. A Thai-share drawdown ≥15% helps open your buy window on its own.
Thai equity stressThe drawdown of Thai shares (a USD proxy blending share-price falls and baht weakness) — the home-grown alarm that fires when Bangkok sells off even if Wall Street stays calm.
Scale-in ladderDeploy in lots as stress deepens (1st lot as the window opens, more as it worsens) — because “open” is rarely the exact bottom. Never all-in on the first signal.
USD / THBUS dollars per Thai baht — the exchange rate. A weak baht (past ~฿37) often means foreigners selling, which forms your discount.
BrentBrent crude — the global oil price benchmark. Thailand imports oil, so rising Brent pressures the baht and company margins.
GoldThe gold price. Rising gold is often a late-cycle “fear and inflation” tell.
MarginProfit as a percent of sales. “Cycle-high margin” is a caution — it usually falls back to normal.
MoatA durable advantage that keeps competitors out — a brand, a network, a licence. What makes a monopolist safe to buy in panic.
Land & credit cycle terms
NPLNon-Performing Loan — a loan the borrower has stopped paying (90+ days late). Rising NPLs feed the foreclosure pipeline that supplies auction land.
Special Mention / Stage-2Loans not yet “bad” but showing early stress — the shadow pipeline, tomorrow’s NPLs. About 7% now, on top of the 2.85% already gone bad.
NPANon-Performing Asset — property a bank has already seized and wants to sell. The bank is a motivated seller; that’s your opening.
LED · กรมบังคับคดีLegal Execution Department — the government body that runs court-ordered property auctions. Your main source of auction supply.
ForeclosureThe legal process where a lender takes and sells a defaulter’s pledged property to recover the debt.
Household debt / GDPTotal household borrowing versus the size of the economy. High (86.7%) means stressed borrowers — both a fuller foreclosure pipeline and a weaker resale market.
Credit / loan growthHow fast banks are lending. Frozen or negative (+0.2% now) means rivals can’t get funded — fewer competing bidders for you.
LTVLoan-to-Value — how much a bank will lend against a property’s price. Looser LTV helps your buyers get a mortgage (helps your exit).
Land price indexAn official gauge of land / house prices over time, by region — how firm your entry and exit prices are.
Transfer + mortgage feeThe government tax to register a sale and a mortgage (normally ~2% + 1%). Cut to 0.01% to stimulate the market — near-zero now, on both your buy and your resale.
Acquisition windowMy summary gauge of how favourable it is to buy at auction now: supply high + competition low = open.
Exit windowThe sell-side gauge beside the buy-side one. It can freeze for years in a crisis, so a cheap buy is only real if you can eventually clear it.
MoratoriumA government freeze on foreclosures / auctions (as in 2020). Compassion for borrowers, but it shuts off your supply of distressed lots at the worst-distress moment.
The companies & funds named here
Your holdingsDIF = Digital Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund · 3BBIF = 3BB Internet Infrastructure Fund (formerly JASIF, the Jasmine broadband fund). Both are income funds you hold for yield — “melting ice cubes,” no additions.
Small capSAT Somboon Advance Technology · TACC T.A.C. Consumer · SAPPE Sappe · SIS SIS Distribution (Thailand) · KISS Rojukiss International · AU After You.
Mid capSTANLY Thai Stanley Electric · GFPT GFPT (integrated poultry) · ICHI Ichitan Group · TVO Thai Vegetable Oil · HANA Hana Microelectronics.
Big capADVANC Advanced Info Service (AIS) · OSP Osotspa · BDMS Bangkok Dusit Medical Services · CPN Central Pattana · CPALL CP All · BH Bumrungrad Hospital · BEM Bangkok Expressway and Metro · AOT Airports of Thailand.
Others namedCP Charoen Pokphand (the group behind CPALL) · CBG Carabao Group (rival to OSP) · CK Ch. Karnchang (affiliate of BEM) · TRUE True Corporation (rival to ADVANC) · MRT Mass Rapid Transit (Bangkok metro) · EV Electric Vehicle.