Juha’s relationship with the stock market began long before his professional career. As a child, he invested his early savings in Finnish shares and quickly became fascinated by the logic of why some investments worked and others did not. “My investment journey began already when I was 12, when the neighbours’ boy came to drink coffee at our house and talked about the great investments he had made in the stock market.” That early exposure to investing developed into a serious habit for Juha: delivering flyers, saving, reading, placing orders, and learning by doing. “During the first year of my investment journey, the stocks that my neighbour recommended had more than doubled, while the stock I chose myself had declined. At a young age I realized that I need to start analysing companies to make real gains,” Juha reflects. By the time Juha entered working life, markets were already more than an interest; they had become a way of thinking.

During his high school years, Juha started working for Jouko Brade, who before his passing was regarded as one of Finland’s most successful investors. Juha became Jouko’s apprentice, and under his guidance he deepened his understanding of investing and developed a strong interest in options and derivatives trading. That fascination later led him to establish a derivatives market-making and brokerage firm together with a few former colleagues he had met while working for Jouko in the 1980s. The company was founded in 1987, grew into an investment banking firm, and was eventually sold in 2002. During his time there, Juha gained valuable experience across many areas of finance. “I have worked across almost every part of this field. I have handled back-office tasks, been responsible for wealth management and derivatives trading, worked as a market maker, and even served as secretary to a broker at the Helsinki Stock Exchange,” he says.

What stands out in his story is how strongly experience has shaped Juha’s judgment. He entered the industry at a time when information moved slowly, and successful investing depended heavily on doing original analytical work. That foundation still shows in the way he approaches companies today: “I do not chase complexity for its own sake, instead I try to understand what a business really is, what it owns, how it earns money, and why the market may be mispricing it,” Juha says. “For a long time, I have analysed companies from a value investor perspective, however, during the recent years, I have started to look at businesses from a growth perspective as well, especially the smaller companies,” Juha adds.

At the heart of Juha’s investment philosophy is the conviction that value often takes time to be recognized. Markets can remain indifferent for long stretches, even when a company’s underlying development is moving in the right direction. For that reason, patience is not simply a virtue in his process; it is a prerequisite. He repeatedly returns to the idea that strong companies and undervalued businesses may require years before the market fully appreciates them. “Nokia is a good example of a company that has been in the fund’s portfolio since the Alcatel-Lucent merger in 2016. The stock remained undervalued for a long time before recently gaining broader market recognition. When you own a cheap, undervalued company, you never know exactly when the market will recognize its value, therefore investing is meant for people with patience,” Juha explains.

This mindset is especially visible in his willingness to hold a wide range of positions for a long time. Rather than trying to force precise short-term outcomes, he prefers to build exposure gradually, allow investment cases to mature, and accept that not every small position will work. The goal is not to be right in every single stock, but to own enough promising ideas for the true winners to matter meaningfully over time. “The portfolio is divided into two parts. The first consists of larger, more mature and well-known companies. The second is more like a garden, where I plant different small seeds and carefully watch how they develop. If one of them begins to show real signs of growth, I can start nurturing it more by increasing the position. After several decades of investing, I have developed a good sense for when a smaller company is beginning to break through. I also like to use charts as a practical tool to visualize and understand where a company may be heading,” Juha says.

He also places strong emphasis on diversification. “A large number of holdings can reduce volatility, improve liquidity management and create room for asymmetry: many small disappointments can be absorbed if a handful of exceptional performers develop as hoped,” Juha adds. This is why he is comfortable with a broad opportunity set, particularly in the Nordic small-cap universe, where he believes deep coverage remains uneven and patient research can still uncover overlooked businesses.

One of these examples is the Swedish company Kopparberg, where telephone trading was part of his story. No Helsinki-based telephone broker was able to execute a trade on the Nordic Growth Market because Kopparberg stock was too small and too illiquid at the time. “Antti, my colleague at the time, and I had analysed Kopparberg and wondered how the company could be so cheap, what was the catch? We then travelled to Sweden and visited the brewery for the annual general meeting, where there were only a handful of investors, the founders, and board representatives. We toured the brewery and spoke with the founders and a board member.” Having heard the company’s side of the story, the duo was in a great hurry and drove very fast back to Stockholm because no telephone broker had been able to execute the trade. Unfortunately, they missed the window. On the day of the AGM, the share price was 6 SEK, and the next day they had to buy at almost 7 SEK to reach a position worth 100,000 EUR. “The highest price at which we sold Kopparberg was 320 SEK per share. It is a good example of a growth story of an undervalued company. Sweden had then, and still has, so many small companies that no one has the time or resources to go through them all. If you are willing to do the work, you can find extremely attractive opportunities, potential ten baggers. Even though the fund holds a very large number of stocks, the reality is that returns come from the ones that rise a lot,” Juha adds. 

One of the more distinctive aspects from Juha is the way he describes the relationship between fundamental and technical analysis. Company fundamentals determine whether a stock is worth owning. “I read every quarterly report for each company in the portfolio to follow how the businesses are developing,” he says. Technical analysis, in turn, helps him with the timing of smaller positions. In his view, charts are not a substitute for understanding a business, but they can be a practical tool when deciding where to build or trim a position. He does not frame this as mechanical indicator-driven investing. Instead, he describes it as pattern recognition informed by long experience. Juha is neither ideological nor rigid. He is pragmatic. “If fundamentals are strong and the market setup improves, I am willing to act, and if the business case weakens, I am willing to reassess. The emphasis is always on using each tool for the right purpose rather than forcing one framework to explain everything,” he summarizes.

Perhaps the most memorable insight from Juha is that he still experiences portfolio management as a form of continuous learning. “Every day brings something new: a company strategy update, a market reaction, a capital markets presentation, or an unexpected shift in sentiment. That steady flow of information is not just part of the job, it is what keeps my work engaging,” Juha reflects. He also speaks openly about the emotional and practical reality of the role. Portfolio management is demanding, difficult to switch off completely, and closely tied to personal discipline. Yet he clearly enjoys that intensity. For him, investing is not something separate from life; it is woven into it. That helps explain the combination of stamina, curiosity, and conviction that comes through so clearly in the discussion. “I like to start the day by reading the news from CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Kauppalehti, Affärsvärlden, Privata Affärer and various investor newsletter subscriptions. I like to use Arvopaperi’s gainers and losers as a tool to help analyse whether the losers have been undervalued or whether there are companies that I won’t necessarily buy but will add to my watch list”.

When asked about the lessons learned during his long career, Juha answers the following: “Patience is a must in investing. Gains are usually not made through short-term bets, but through long-term commitment and a genuine understanding of companies. Another common mistake investors make is assuming that a company’s business model will stay the same forever. Nokia is a good example: it evolved from selling rubber boots into a leading global telecommunications company, and its business continues to develop. The secret behind great businesses is their ability to change their business model and adapt quickly to new environments,” he adds. 

Juha brings up 3 relevant topics in our discussion about the market outlook. The first is the undervaluation of small cap funds in Europe, secondly, the new European pension reforms and lastly the AI transformation.

“This year, much of the discussion has focused on how growth has been concentrated among the large technology companies. Yet the Russell 2000 index has actually been the strongest performer and has outpaced the Nasdaq 100 year to date. Recently, significant capital has flowed out of small-cap funds, particularly in the Nordics and across Europe”, he says. Juha sees this as an opportunity for patient investors. Over the long term, he notes, small and micro-cap companies have historically outperformed larger companies, although they also carry higher risk. That is why broad diversification is especially important in this part of the portfolio. Juha also believes Europe could follow a similar path to the US in small-cap investing. “Typically, the US moves first, and Europe follows its lead after a while,” he says. He also welcomes the recent Finnish pension reforms, which allow pension funds to allocate more capital to the equity market. “I believe the ongoing European pension reforms will bring new capital to European stock markets,” he says.

Juha believes the ongoing AI transformation may resemble the development of the railway system in the United States. The biggest winners were not necessarily the railway builders themselves, but the companies that were able to use the new infrastructure to scale their businesses. He sees a similar pattern emerging with AI. “Nordic companies, particularly engineering-led businesses, have been quick to adopt AI in their work. That creates significant growth potential for these companies,” he says.

When Juha is not busy analysing company financials, he likes to relax by listening to audiobooks about history and enjoys swimming in the ocean.

This is marketing communication produced by GRIT Fund Management Company Ltd. The information given herein is not sufficient to make an investment decision. Read the prospectus and the key information document (KID) of the fund before making any final investment decisions. The value of an investment may rise or fall, and investors may lose part or all of the capital invested.