Independent research on the U.S. markets, Baptista Research

Baptista Research

Independent research on the U.S. markets

Baptista Research is an independent financial research house focused on the U.S. markets. We provide equity research as well as credit research reports on the top-listed U.S. companies with most of our focus on technology, consumer goods and services, automobiles, industrials, oil and gas, pharma, and healthcare. Our research has served more than 3000 institutional investors including mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, family offices, and various buy-side firms. We operate a research subscription service where institutions, as well as retail investors, can have priority access to all our research. We also have a wide distribution of our research reports across some of the top global financial platforms. Apart from equity research and credit research, we also provide advisory services with respect to mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity/ venture capital fundraising, valuation reports, and investment management services for corporates.
Baptista Research is owned and managed by Ishan Majumdar, an ex-Venture Capitalist/ Investment Banker, a Chartered Accountant, and a Masters’ degree holder in Management from HEC Paris. Ishan has nearly a decade of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions, Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs), Venture Capital Investing, Corporate Strategy, and Valuation in front-office roles at the likes of BNP Paribas CIB, Credit Agricole CIB, Groupe Danone, and TIW Private Equity. He has worked on and closed multiple acquisition deals, leveraged buyouts, and start-up investment transactions.

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul><li>Shopify is moving deeper into the emerging world of AI-powered shopping, and its latest partnership with Meta could offer one of the clearest examples yet of what that future may look like.</li><li>Meta plans to allow its personal AI agent, Muse, to complete purchases from Shopify merchants through Shop Pay, potentially turning AI from a product-recommendation tool into an active participant in the transaction itself.</li><li>For consumers, that could mean asking an assistant to find a specific product, compare available options and ultimately complete the purchase without following the familiar path of searching, visiting multiple websites and manually checking out.</li></ul>

Shopify is moving deeper into the emerging world of AI-powered shopping, and its latest partnership with Meta could offer one of the clearest examples yet of what that future may look like.Meta plans to allow its personal AI agent, Muse, to complete purchases from Shopify merchants through Shop Pay, potentially turning AI from a product-recommendation tool into an active participant in the transaction itself.For consumers, that could mean asking an assistant to find a specific product, compare available options and ultimately complete the purchase without following the familiar path of searching, visiting multiple websites and manually checking out.

Shopify Wants AI To Become Your Personal Shopper—& That Could Change Everything!

Technical Analyst, Vermilion Research

Joe Jasper

Technical Analyst

Technical and Quantitative Research

Vermilion Research

Vermilion’s objective is to deliver timely, actionable, and unique technical research to professional investors through the application of our various technical indicators.

Our research strategists seek to highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various technical and quantitative indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. Our unique research methodology, centered on relative strength, enables our strategists to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing the universe of actively traded stocks into discrete sectors, then into industry groups. We then apply our technical and quantitative tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sector or group, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. We provide a historical perspective that often reveals, through our long-term charts, how price patterns often repeat themselves over time.

Technical Analysis

<ul>
<li>Our global intermediate-term outlook remains bullish on MSCI ACWI (in place since our 5/14/25 Compass). We also remain near-term bullish on MSCI ACWI since our 4/23/26 Int’l Compass.</li>
<li>Value areas of the market are underperforming while Technology and A.I. areas are starting to dominate again.</li>
<li>On ACWI-US, we want to see $156.50 support hold on any pullback (the breakout level) in order to remain near-term bullish, while major support is at $151.50.</li>
</ul>


Our global intermediate-term outlook remains bullish on MSCI ACWI (in place since our 5/14/25 Compass). We also remain near-term bullish on MSCI ACWI since our 4/23/26 Int’l Compass.
Value areas of the market are underperforming while Technology and A.I. areas are starting to dominate again.
On ACWI-US, we want to see $156.50 support hold on any pullback (the breakout level) in order to remain near-term bullish, while major support is at $151.50.


Concerns Mounting as MSCI ACWI Tests Base Support. Buys in Tech, Services, Financials, Healthcare

<ul><li>Shopify Inc. reported its second quarter 2026 results with continued broad-based growth across key metrics, reflecting strong momentum in its commerce platform business.</li><li>Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) increased 32% year-over-year, reaching $116 billion, marking the fifth consecutive quarter with GMV growth above 30%.</li><li>Revenue rose 34% to $3.6 billion, driven by gains across merchant sizes, geographies, and sales channels, including a 37% growth in international GMV and a 32% increase in offline point-of-sale GMV.</li></ul>

Shopify Inc. reported its second quarter 2026 results with continued broad-based growth across key metrics, reflecting strong momentum in its commerce platform business.Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) increased 32% year-over-year, reaching $116 billion, marking the fifth consecutive quarter with GMV growth above 30%.Revenue rose 34% to $3.6 billion, driven by gains across merchant sizes, geographies, and sales channels, including a 37% growth in international GMV and a 32% increase in offline point-of-sale GMV.

Shopify’s 68% Payments Penetration — Can Its Commerce Flywheel Get Even Stronger?

US-EU Index Rebalances / Quantitative Researcher

Dimitris Ioannidis

Global Financial Data and Analytics Platform

ORTEX

ORTEX is a global financial data and analytics platform providing real-time securities lending and short interest data, index rebalance data, holdings and insider transactions, trading signals, corporate actions and news,  stock machine learning and factor scores and other analytics. The majority of the data are downloadable and accessible through APIs.

Index Rebalance

<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/mongodb-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:26655:1" rel="noopener">MongoDB (MDB US)</a> is forecasted to be deleted from Nasdaq100 on 16 May due to an index weighting of lower than 0.1% on the last day of March and April.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/shopify-inc-de74469e-4678-489b-9b50-a80a5790c5ef" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:25906:1" rel="noopener">Shopify (SHOP US)</a> is the forecasted replacement. The company became eligible following its listing transfer from NYSE to Nasdaq on 31 March.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/alnylam-pharmaceuticals-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:2191:1" rel="noopener">Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY US)</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/ebay-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:1291:1" rel="noopener">eBay Inc (EBAY US)</a> are the main addition candidates for the acquisition of <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/ansys-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:15473:1" rel="noopener">Ansys Inc (ANSS US)</a> by mid-2025 and the December 2025 review.</li>
</ul>



MongoDB (MDB US) is forecasted to be deleted from Nasdaq100 on 16 May due to an index weighting of lower than 0.1% on the last day of March and April.

Shopify (SHOP US) is the forecasted replacement. The company became eligible following its listing transfer from NYSE to Nasdaq on 31 March.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY US) and eBay Inc (EBAY US) are the main addition candidates for the acquisition of Ansys Inc (ANSS US) by mid-2025 and the December 2025 review.


MongoDB (MDB US): Fast-Exit from Nasdaq100 in May 2025

Pan-Asia Index Rebalances/ Events/ Delta One, Periscope Analytics

Brian Freitas

Pan-Asia Index Rebalances/ Events/ Delta One

Periscope Analytics

Periscope Analytics focuses on event-driven trades across Asia Pacific and provides comprehensive, timely and systematic coverage of index changes to major Asia Pacific indices in a structured manner.

The analysis includes forecasted inclusions and exclusions to all major Asian indices that have significant amount of tracking assets, including estimates of passive buy/sell flow on the stocks. The service also provides commentary and impact of market consultations, ground rule changes, and other events (IPOs, spin-offs, M&A) that could lead to index changes and passive flow.

Periscope Analytics works with multi-strategy hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, stat arb trading groups and long-only investors that invest and trade in the Asia Pacific region with the data being used to trade index rebalances, avoid pre-positioning and passive flow, and to time entry into and exit from stocks.

Event-Driven Trades Across Asia Pacific

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing / Index Rebalance

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (388 HK)

<ul>
<li>The FRTIB benchmark switch from the EAFE Index to the ACWI IMI ex-USA ex-China ex-Hong Kong Index will result in a round trip trade of around US$56bn.</li>
<li>The changes for the <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/shanghai-shenzhen-csi-300-inde" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:22906:1" rel="noopener">CSI 300</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/csi-smallcap-500-index-shang" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:35347:1" rel="noopener">CSI 500</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/sse-science-and-technology-innovation-board-50-index" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:29279:1" rel="noopener">STAR50</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/shanghai-stock-exchange-sse-50-a-share-index" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:31073:1" rel="noopener">SSE50</a> and a bunch of other mainland China indices will be announced after market close on Friday.</li>
<li>Relatively quiet week for ETF flows with no major creations or redemptions during the week.</li>
</ul>


The FRTIB benchmark switch from the EAFE Index to the ACWI IMI ex-USA ex-China ex-Hong Kong Index will result in a round trip trade of around US$56bn.
The changes for the CSI 300, CSI 500, STAR50, SSE50 and a bunch of other mainland China indices will be announced after market close on Friday.
Relatively quiet week for ETF flows with no major creations or redemptions during the week.


Index Rebalance & ETF Flow Recap: FRTIB, Japan, CSI300, CSI500, STAR50, WuXi XDC, Asahi

Canada

Shopify Inc. provides a cloud-based commerce platform. The Company offers a platform for merchants to create an omni-channel experience that helps showcase the merchant's brand. Shopify serves customers in Canada.

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Shopify (SHOP US)

Shopify Wants AI To Become Your Personal Shopper—& That Could Change Everything!

Shopify is moving deeper into the emerging world of AI-powered shopping, and its latest partnership with Meta could offer one of the clearest...

Baptista Research

Concerns Mounting as MSCI ACWI Tests Base Support. Buys in Tech, Services, Financials, Healthcare

Concerns Mounting as MSCI $ACWI Tests Base Support. Actionable Themes: Technology, Services, Financials, and Health Care

Vermilion Research

Shopify’s 68% Payments Penetration — Can Its Commerce Flywheel Get Even Stronger?

Shopify Inc. reported its second quarter 2026 results with continued broad-based growth across key metrics, reflecting strong momentum in its...

Baptista Research

MongoDB (MDB US): Fast-Exit from Nasdaq100 in May 2025

MDB is set to be removed from Nasdaq100 on 16 May due to its low index weighting, with SHOP expected to replace it. ALNY and EBAY are potential...

Dimitris Ioannidis

Index Rebalance & ETF Flow Recap: FRTIB, Japan, CSI300, CSI500, STAR50, WuXi XDC, Asahi

This recap highlights Insights covering Asian index rebalances (announcements/ forecasts/ IPO Fast Entry/ M&A driven changes). We also highlight...

Brian Freitas

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