Cohong Lane's Top Reads: Q2 of 2026
The seven pieces you read, shared, and argued with most between April and June, and a good place to start if you have just arrived.
I am in Denmark this week, so there is no new Cohong Lane deep dive today.
Instead, with our first full quarter behind us, here is a look back at what actually landed since I launched in mid-April.
A lot of you have joined recently, so this doubles as a place to start. And if you have been here a while, a mid-year list is a fair chance to catch the one or two you meant to read and never got round to.
The short version first. Cohong Lane is where I invest my own capital in public. Real money, a deliberate China tilt, currently about a fifth of the portfolio, primary work rather than market shorthand, and my mistakes on the record alongside everything else. I am not running a model portfolio or a signal service. I am thinking out loud about how a former CFO tries to compound his own savings without an institution behind him.
Here they are, roughly in the order you ranked them.
Top of the list, and the piece most of you have taken to. It lays out the operating system behind the whole portfolio: two core buckets, a fair-value compass, and the discipline to buy when nobody else wants to.
Next, the most-liked piece of the quarter. Why I hold 4 state lenders for a politically mandated coupon rather than capital gains, and the single signal that would make me sell out.
Then the method piece, and one of the most shared. How I trace a Five-Year Plan mandate down to the handful of companies that actually get paid once the policy lands.
Going by your comments, this next one drew the most discussion: the pace that forces Chinese companies to ship or die, and why I pay to train in that gym.
There was also the week I left the desk and got on a train to see one of these bets on the ground. The trip added what the filings could not.
You restacked this one more than any other. It is where I try to separate the noise you simply have to tolerate from the loss you actually need to fear.
And if you have just arrived and want the why behind all of it: what made me leave a family-office CFO seat to invest my own capital in public, and where the odd little name comes from.
That is the first quarter in the life of Cohong Lane. Whichever one you open, you will have a fair sense of how I think by the end of it.
Back next Saturday with something new. Until then, enjoy the weekend.
Philip
Cohong Lane is a periodical publication made generally available to the public. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any securities. Full disclaimer · About Philip.