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Dave Waters

@alluvialcapital.bsky.social
1.4K followers 659 following 203 posts

Pittsburgh investment manager since 2014. Buying the weirdest and wildest. alluvial.substack.com tactilefund.com

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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
To make money in value investing, you have to buy value. I see so many people complaining after they bought something optically cheap, not taking into account things like: 1. The biggest open-ended off-balance sheet liability there is: bad management. Sufficiently bad management can sink any idea.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I saw a copperhead this weekend. I did not tread thereon.
Agkistrodon contortix
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Big Boy came through my town!
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Just for fun, I launched a new substack where I present and comment on old annual reports from all sorts of companies. We have some fun ones in the queue. Check out the first! vintageannualreports.substack.com/p/american-a...
vintageannualreports.substack.com
American Airlines 1976
"Doing What We Do Best."
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Did you know the New England Patriots were once a public company? I just learned. Shares traded over the counter in the 70s.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
An MJ Lenderman track playing in the PNC Bank lobby. A younger me never could have predicted how the boundaries between mainstream and indie culture would dissolve.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Reading a Substack article about some company with strong outlook, healthy balance sheet, capable management, "reasonable valuation." "Intriguing, let's take a look!" 55x earnings/30x EBITDA/20x revenue. Every single time.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
The Korean stock market is fun. I found a very profitable white label cosmetics manufacturer on the KOSDAQ. The location? New Jersey.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
One of the strangest companies I have come across is Texaf S.A. This is a Belgian company that owns properties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They lease these mostly to NGOs and foreign workers and get paid in Euros. Results are pretty steady.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Now and then you pull up the 10-Q for some marginal micro-cap company, see it is 614 pages long, and close it, understanding that doing literally anything else would be a better use of your precious, irreplaceable hours.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
On the ferry business. tactilefund.substack.com/p/ferries-vo...
tactilefund.substack.com
Ferries! Voyaging With Irish Continental Group
When the economic moat is actual water
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Interesting day. US markets assessing the de-escalation news as maybe about 50% credible, Euro markets taking a much dimmer view.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I don't exactly what the pain threshold for the next "TACO" event is, but I suspect we are closer after this week.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Headlines you see when things are going great. www.reuters.com/business/ene...
reuters.com
Oil unlikely to hit $200 a barrel, US energy chief says
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said ​on Thursday global oil prices are unlikely to hit $200 a ‌barrel even as crude tankers remained stalled in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. and Israeli war wi...
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I am grateful to the friend who sent me the Rochester Community Baseball annual report, but based on recent results, a minor league ball team is something you own for the fun of it, not for the profits. As it should be.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
A frozen waterfall.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Saw this passage in an annual report. How can I go to sleep tonight without knowing what the Crown Garnet Mice Incident was?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Every day it takes all my effort not to buy more and more cement stocks. Today I succumbed to temptation and bought one that trades in a weird auction market in Barcelona.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
What a time to own non-US Dollar assets. (Please don't ask me about all those years I spent owning European equities and earning nothing.)
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
I guess when it works, it works.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Everyone ready to be liberated again?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
The "great white whale" of my investing career is finding a way to trade on the Swiss OTC-X market. Just look at the names of these companies. It is killing me that I can't buy them!
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Love to make a principal peyment
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
How often do you see an 88% year-over-year revenue decline in a candy business? "Sow Good Inc." needs a new name.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
At 40 I can feel myself drifting farther from the cultural zeitgeist by the day and it's a peaceful sensation. I have no idea what a labubu is and I am just fine with that.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Congrats, American electorate. Who needs an independent Central Bank anyway?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Doing a thread of some Iceland pics. If you have ever thought of going, DO IT. Just avoid anywhere that the cruise ships offer excursions. First, views of the southern Snæfellsnes Peninsula.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Had to explain to my 9-year-old why his "yo mama" jokes directed at his sister do not have the desired rhetorical effect.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
All I know is no one had better try to tell me that women are too emotional for the presidency.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
The submarine vets have the best float in my town’s Memorial Day Parade.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
What happened to all the people saying "Tariffs don't matter, a rising US Dollar will offset the higher cost of imports?"
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
These mobile spammers have no idea who they're trying to scam.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
New post on tactilefund.substack.com. A link to our first quarter letter and a recent conversation. Thanks for reading!
tactilefund.substack.com
Tactile Fund LP | Dave Waters | Substack
Tactile Fund LP makes long-term investments in companies with extraordinary physical assets. The Tactile Substack tracks the fund's progress and profiles its investment philosophy and holdings. Click ...
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Seeing a lot of "2x free cash flow, insane margins, will grow 20% for years!" stock pitches where the author does not seem to realize the company is operating in a legal gray area that could end with the stroke of a pen, or is an outright fraud. Be careful.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
It's very fun having my son at the office today, but so far he is much more interested in snacks and playing Minecraft than parsing financial filings. Maybe someday.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
There is a day every father hopes for: the day his son looks up at him and says “Dad, what was D-Day?”
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Just an incredible disclosure in this 8-k. www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Let me be very honest for just a moment: this sucks.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Good time for a company to drop an 8-k if they were sitting on some bad news. No one's going to read it.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
There is a certain low-end investment bank that pushes dodgy IPOs and private placements, and their brokers have called me 2-3 times each week for the past three years. I have never once picked up or responded to their voicemails. These guys are machines. I can almost summon a grudging respect.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
I was bewildered as to why Deutsche Bahn would need sleeping cars by the millions, then I learned that "sleepers" are what our European friends call railroad ties.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Gotta be honest, I don't understand the big fear American investors have around owning PFICs. It's an extra form and some adverse tax treatment. Not that onerous for the right opportunity.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Last night I failed my team at bar trivia by failing to remember which e-commerce player eBay bought in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Any other geriatric millennials out there know?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Everything in my portfolio that benefits from a worried US consumer is on fire this month.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Just starting my look through small German construction cos. and contractors. Any names I should focus on?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Are we 100% sure a Democratic infiltrator isn’t feeding Trump these ideas? “F*** you, farmers!” seems like bad electoral strategy.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
It's very fun watching TSLA plunge today, but remember that the 52-week low is $139.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Russell 2000 now -4% from Election Day close, down nearly 12% from 2024 high.
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Any deleveraging stories out there? Went looking last night and found nearly nothing. I don't think "good business, bad balance sheet" situations are real, but are there really no businesses trading at 6x EBITDA levered 3x that can increase equity value 33% by paying down one turn of leverage?
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Dave Waters @alluvialcapital.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Our creative 8-year-old son has invented a detailed narrative about a warrior Arctic Fox who fights evil iguanas. He wants to write a book. I fully support this, but I have to figure out how to tell him the main character can’t be named “White Claw.”
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