South American political unpredictability keeps investors from rewarding MercadoLibre's excellent fundamentals. Today's selloff illustrates that risk, despite the strength of the business. x.com  x.com 

Political uncertainty and Amazon competition have held MercadoLibre's stock back despite a humming business. The company is great and the stock deserves to turn, but at roughly 45 times earnings and only about 12% gained over five years, it has remained a difficult stock to own. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Latin American equities' sell-off looks overdone as long as the underlying businesses keep growing and fundamentals remain intact. Under that condition, the drop is market noise, and MercadoLibre and Nu Holdings could offer attractive opportunities amid the panic. x.com 

MercadoLibre's collapsing margins and earnings make its 45-times-earnings valuation look like a value trap. It faces intense competition, and less of its revenue reaches the bottom line; falling earnings make the stock more expensive even as its price falls. Nu Holdings trades at 17 times earnings and Inter & Co at 7 times, with both growing revenue and earnings robustly. Selling MercadoLibre to build positions in companies with better fundamentals is under consideration. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

MercadoLibre falls into the disliked software sector despite being a big platform with fintech, and there are many hungry Latin Americans who want to use AI to build software too. x.com 

MercadoLibre is a no-brainer long-term buy at current prices because the market's fixation on AI infrastructure has drained capital from proven businesses, leaving them at bargain valuations. It has an almost unassailable competitive position that AI will not replace, and AI should lift its margins through logistics and operational efficiency. New technologies eventually commoditize, so a deep moat is what matters, and long-term investors can profit from the mispricing. x.com  x.com 

Sea Limited's strong execution and regained management trust make the beaten-down stock a buy here. After a rough two years following Covid, it faces less competition in its home markets than Amazon or MercadoLibre face in theirs, yet its stock trades very low. Existing holders should be loading up or question their conviction; long-term margins remain uncertain for both Sea and MercadoLibre. x.com 

MercadoLibre can tread water for a long time because it constantly has to spend to defend its revenue base. It is a very capital-intensive business trading at more than 40x forward earnings, leaving it vulnerable if revenue ever slows. x.com 

Today's fundamentals and long growth runways make Nu Holdings and MercadoLibre among the market's most compelling and mispriced opportunities for patient capital. Their short-term outlook shifts mostly with FX volatility and fiscal and monetary policy uncertainty. x.com 

MercadoLibre may not be a buy yet, since its margin-compressing investment cycle looks set to run for a while. An AI-assisted review of gross and operating margins against prior investment cycles points that way, after a first read of the risk/reward had looked like a buy. The stock is worth revisiting at the end of the year. x.com  x.com