🗣️ Investor Talk #57: Amrita Roy

Amrita blends macro thinking with AI trends to find the next big winners.

Apr 13, 2026

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Every interview follows the same set of sharp, insightful questions — such as “What is your investment strategy?”, “What are your highest conviction stocks?”, and “If you could give one piece of advice to investors, what would it be?”

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In this edition, we have the pleasure of interviewing:

Name: Amrita Roy @amritaroy2011
Age: 36
Residence/Country: Originally from India, now living in Tbilisi, Georgia
Invests since: 2020

Introduction
I have an extensive background working in technology startups in San Francisco Bay Area for several years before I made a career pivot into investing and finance in 2020/2021. During that period of time, I got deeply interested in understanding how the global economies and financial markets work. Ray Dalio’s “The Principles of Dealing with a Changing World Order” had a big role to play in inspiring me to embark on a quest to study and disentangle how the world’s financial markets and economies work and use the insights to discover and invest in companies that sit at the intersection of key technological and cultural waves.

Less than two years later, I started my Substack called The Pragmatic Optimist. In 2024, I also started actively contributing to Seeking Alpha & other financial platforms to share my research on technology companies that I had started investing in. Today, my work on both these platforms share a tight synergy in terms of our core macroeconomic thesis, industry trends in AI and investing themes and companies. Additionally, we also share our portfolio along with real-time trades through our paid service on The Pragmatic Optimist newsletter.

What is your investment strategy?
We focus on high-growth assets that generally sit within AI or the digitally native ecosystem, along with some exposure to cryptocurrency. Of late, we’ve been utilizing a lot of thematic investment strategies to deploy our capital, possibly even in multi-phased approaches.

On a more tactical basis, we lean a lot on top-down methodologies, looking at industries, sectors, themes, dependencies, competitive positioning and then picking out our winners which we believe will deliver category-leading performances over the rest of its peers. A lot of our research is also centered in identifying market mispricing in companies, particularly, where revenue and/or margins may be about to inflect in either direction.

The thing is that the pace of progress in AI is much faster than the previous innovation cycles like cloud computing, internet, etc., so this is a constant process of keeping ourselves updated across the demand signals developing across the entire AI ecosystem.

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How many stocks are currently held in your portfolio?
In The Pragmatic Optimist portfolio, we own a total of 22 stocks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum as well as iShares MSCI India ETF for exposure in the Indian markets.

Which sectors do you mainly focus on?
I tend to focus my research on hyperscalers, software and cybersecurity. Particularly, I am keen on finding long-term opportunities in platform companies with embedded distribution, ecosystems that lock in users, system-level integration that competitors can’t easily replicate.

What are your 3 highest conviction stocks?
$META - Meta
$PLTR - Palantir
$CRWD - CrowdStrike

What is the stock in your portfolio with the highest return?
The current position in our portfolio with the highest return is AMD $AMD, yielding 77%.

Since the start of 2026, we have trimmed and/or exited several positions at significant gains, which include iShares Silver Trust ETF at 200%, SPDR Gold Shares ETF at 110%, Celestica at 250%, Alphabet at 50% and TSMC at 50%.

What is the biggest investing mistake you have made?
My two biggest mistakes since launching The Pragmatic Optimist portfolio include investing in Zscaler and remaining overly patient with the stock. Since 2026, it has seen the largest decline in the cybersecurity complex as the competition in the Zero Trust space heats up, with companies like Cloudflare that are eating its lunch. At the moment, we are planning to exit the position altogether, as we consolidate our holdings in our higher conviction names.

My second mistake is building too heavy a position in Microsoft for the portfolio at the end of last year, which is also weighing down on the portfolio performance.

If you could give one piece of advice to investors, what would it be?
The macro narrative at the moment is “higher for longer”. With inflation projected to tick up higher in the short-term, I believe any bounce in the S&P 500 should be treated with caution, at least until we get evidence that inflation expectations has peaked. This will create a lot of short-term volatility and it is important to practice appropriate risk management strategies as you navigate between cash preservation vs. selective investments.

Amrita’s Favorites

📖 Favorite book: -

🎧 Favorite podcast: -

💬 Favorite quote: -

👤 Favorite FinX account: I have several favourites: @RihardJarc, @StockSavvyShay, @SemiAnalysis_, @damnang2, @Beth_Kindig

Where can we find more info about you?
Substack: Amrita Roy
Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/author/amrita-roy
X: @amritaroy2011

That’s a wrap!
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