Aydin Ali · NOVA student · Independent research
Discipline,
with receipts.
I’m Aydin Ali, a Northern Virginia Community College student who started investing with $500 in 2022. This is where I show the work: what I own, why I own it, what could prove me wrong, and what I change when the evidence does. A written Investment Policy Statement keeps the rules from moving with my mood. Not a fund, not a firm—just one student learning in public and keeping the scorecard honest.
For First-Time Readers
Four stops. No scavenger hunt.
If you have only a few minutes, start with one real decision, one mistake, the student responsible for both, and the rules written before the outcome.
-
01
See one decision end to end
The flagship AMD memo: evidence, competing view, scenarios, decision rules, and what would change the thesis. About 2 minutes.
-
02
See a mistake examined
A promised trim that never happened, the difference between acknowledgment and action, and the process change that followed. About 1 minute.
-
03
Meet the student behind it
How I built the project, what I learned teaching at my mosque, and why I want the work challenged by other people. About 1 minute.
-
04
Read the rules set in advance
The sizing, selling, and accountability rules written before the market makes them inconvenient. About 1 minute.
Keep Reading
Four pieces that go deeper
Past the 3-minute version above: a full research memo, an admitted mistake, the written rules, and the data-driven case behind a live thesis.
SNDK — Sandisk Corp
The full standardized template: thesis statement, bull/bear risk-reward table, valuation logic, and catalyst — for the largest position in the book.
Post-MortemWhat I got wrong last month
Original thesis, what actually happened, and the specific process flaw it exposed — the accountability section every full letter carries.
Governing DocumentInvestment Policy Statement
The written rules for sizing, sell discipline, and accountability — set before the moment of temptation, not after.
Data-Driven AnalysisIs the AI trade too crowded?
Using the book's own correlation matrix, not narrative, to test — and partly correct — a claim made in an earlier letter.
September 2026 Strategy Tear Sheet
Position count, the full compliance record, concentration risk, and the latest post-mortem — one page, condensed from the full letter.
Performance Tracker
Real, daily-logged cumulative return against SPY, QQQ, and IWM — indexed, toggleable, and honest about the date tracking actually started.
What I Publish
A standing body of work, dated and on the record
Everything here is written to a standard — not just what I own, but why, what could go wrong, and where I've already broken my own rules.
Monthly thesis
One company, laid out in full — what must be true, what breaks it, and how it's sized.
Performance vs. SPY
Time-weighted, with deposits stripped out. If the index wins, I say so.
"What I Got Wrong"
A standing post-mortem on the calls that missed, published in the open.
Security pages
One page per holding — valuation, a 52-week range, and a bull / base / bear case.
Opinion
My own argument, built from data already published here — clearly labeled as interpretation, not fact.
Compliance Ledger
Every IPS cap, checked live against the actual portfolio — including the caps that were breached and how each one actually got resolved.
From the Desk
Latest news on the book
Same-day, sourced writeups on real market events touching the portfolio — not just monthly letters. Every article links the exact position affected and what it means for sizing and risk.
Memory and Crypto Shares Rally as a 5% Treasury Yield Splits the Market
Most stocks fell, but memory chips and crypto-linked shares surged. The book gained 1.09%, and Sandisk’s rally put the single-position cap back in breach.
September 17, 2026 · SPY, QQQ, SMH, INTC, TEMStocks Rebound as Oil Falls; Chip Shares Extend Their Post-Fed Gains
Lower oil and easing bond pressure lifted the market Thursday. Semiconductors led, while Tempus AI surged without a confirmed company catalyst.
September 16, 2026 · INTC, MRVL, COIN, SPY, DIAThe Fed Hiked Rates for the First Time in Three Years. Intel Rallied 4% on a Different Story.
The Fed raised its target range to 3.75%–4.00%. Intel rallied on reported SK Hynix manufacturing talks while Coinbase fell against a higher crypto tape.
Top Performers
Highest return, by position
Ranked by public closing price versus the cost basis in the published holdings file, through 2026-11-06. This is an unrealized price comparison, not a cash-flow-adjusted account return. Private marks are excluded.
Public prices as of: November 6, 2026 close
Process over performance. This account started in 2022 with $500 and has run continuously since — its real, dollar-weighted all-time return is +72.14%, verified via Blossom.
Four years isn't a long enough track record to prove investing skill, and I don't treat it as one. What it did teach me: most of my mistakes have been sizing mistakes, not stock-picking mistakes — which is why the IPS and the post-mortem record are more honest evidence of process than the number above.
Portfolio Composition
By bucket
Public-price snapshot through 2026-11-06. The 32 published holdings retain their recorded share counts; allocations include the unchanged private mark. See Holdings for the table and the data ledger for source limits.
Core / quality compounders — 62.56%
The anchor of the book: profitable or clear path-to-profit large & mid caps across semiconductors, cybersecurity, cloud software, power, and consumer brands. SNDK is the largest position at 10.43%, above the written 10% cap and openly flagged.
See the full table →Index hedge — 18.16%
Broad-market and dividend ETFs, always held as ballast. Per the IPS: if the rest of the book can't beat this over time, the honest move is to own more of it and say so.
See the full table →Emerging growth — 11.42%
Smaller operating companies with real revenue, sized deliberately between the core holdings and the speculative sleeve — concentrated in AI/cloud infrastructure (CRWV, NBIS) and cloud software (DDOG, CRWD).
See the full table →Speculative sleeve — 5.75%
Micro-caps, story stocks, and pre-profit names, capped at 25% of invested capital. SPCX is the site’s recorded private-company mark, not a verified public-market quote; its displayed value should not be assumed executable.
See the full table →Leveraged / derivative — 2.10%
Leveraged & thematic ETFs, daily-reset. Still under its 5% cap, but NBIL's weight has climbed with NBIS's own rally — daily-reset leverage means its return doesn't track a clean 2× multiple, as the leverage-decay study shows directly. See the July letter for the earlier, slower-growth version of this story.
Read the full writeup →Event Risk
Upcoming Catalysts & Event Risks
Dated, real events with a direct line to the book — not a general market calendar.
-
Reported Sep 16, 2026
FOMC rate decision
The Fed raised its target range 25 basis points to 3.75–4.00%, its first increase in three years. The full cross-asset reaction and the distinction between sourced and unexplained moves are recorded in the September 16 market wrap.
-
Sep 30, 2026
MU fiscal Q4 earnings
Micron’s first report since the memory trade round-tripped in late August — and the read-through for SanDisk, the largest position in the book, which trades with it.
Macro & Rates Context
The November 6 jobs report showed that October nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 and unemployment was 4.1%. The October 28 FOMC statement left the target range at 3.75%–4.00%; two members preferred an increase. September CPI rose 0.6% month over month and 3.7% year over year; core CPI rose 2.6% year over year. The October 29 advance GDP estimate put third-quarter real growth at a 3.4% annualized rate. These releases describe different periods; they are not same-day market quotes.
Yield Curve & Credit Monitor
A Note From Me
Friday closed with the book up 1.09%, but that result was concentrated: Sandisk added roughly $352 by itself. Its weight rose to 10.43%, putting the position cap back in breach. I am publishing both facts together because a strong return does not cancel a process failure. The closing edition separates what the market proved from the explanations that remain unverified.
— Aydin Ali, writing this from the same account I trade in
Since Inception
Milestones
-
2022
Started with $500
Saved earnings and gift money — the entire starting capital, no outside funding.
-
Early 2026
Wrote the Investment Policy Statement
Rules set before the moment of temptation: position limits, sell discipline, a benchmark to be held to.
-
July 2026
Linked Blossom verification
Holdings independently verified — the "Verified via Blossom" badge became literally true, not aspirational.
-
July 2026
Published the first letter
"Portfolio Composition & Ongoing Risks" — the first full, dated positioning letter, on the record.
-
July 2026
Grew from 15 to 32 positions
Added cybersecurity, cloud software, and power-generation names as the book diversified beyond its original semiconductor-heavy core — see the July letter for the full recount.
-
July 2026
Started the News desk
Dated, sourced writeups on real market events touching the book, published the same day they happen — starting with the Nebius/Meta cloud story.
-
Jul 23, 2026
Launched the Coverage Book
A consistent research one-pager for all 32 positions — business description, thesis, bull/base/bear cases, and valuation, cross-linked to every existing security page.
-
September 2026
Completed the first full monthly cycle
The September checkpoint and daily decision record now sit beside the original July thesis, making the process reviewable across more than one reporting cycle.
Photo: Scott Beale, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The work left the screen
I started with checking accounts, not stock picks.
I helped teach financial literacy at my mosque, and we started with the questions people actually had—not with stock charts. What is the difference between checking and savings? Why is the minimum payment not the amount you should pay? What happens when a credit-card bill is late? From there, we worked toward credit scores, mortgages, bonds, Roth IRAs, index funds, and eventually investing. Halal investing added a question that has stayed with me: making money matters, but so does understanding where that return came from and what your money helped finance.
Teaching this made me much less impressed by complicated vocabulary. Explaining a credit-card statement clearly can be harder—and more useful—than talking about a stock for twenty minutes. If I cannot explain why paying the minimum becomes expensive, what can hurt a credit score, or why an index fund behaves differently from one company, then I probably need to go back and learn it again. That lesson now shapes this entire site: understand the basics, explain the reasoning, and do not use jargon as a hiding place.
Open the financial foundations + halal investing guide →What comes next
AEA Fellows: more students, more specialties, more useful disagreement.
I am designing a future contributor program for students who want to publish research, three-statement models, news, newsletters, opinions, data tools, and financial-literacy explainers—with named credit and a real revision process.
No cohort exists yet. The framework is public now because the standards should come before the roster.
Explore the AEA Fellows framework →Methodology
How this is built
The standard every page on this site is held to — not aspirational, just what's actually true about where the numbers come from.
Verified holdings
Every position, weight, and return is pulled from Blossom, a portfolio-tracking service linked directly to my brokerage — not self-reported.
Company fundamentals
Market cap, shares outstanding, and business descriptions come from Blossom and SEC filings. If a figure isn't available from a source I trust, the page says so instead of guessing.
Price & market data
Historical prices, 52-week ranges, and index comparisons come from Massive Market Data, cited on every chart and range bar where it appears.
Every rule break, reported
The Investment Policy Statement sets position caps before the fact. When a position drifts over one, it's disclosed in the next letter — not quietly resized off the record.
Questions Worth Answering
Before you read further
The questions I'd ask if I found this site cold.
Is this real money?
Yes. It started with $500 of saved earnings and gift money, and every position, weight, and return on this site is pulled from Blossom, a portfolio tracker linked directly to my brokerage — not typed in by hand and not a paper-trading account.
Why publish your own mistakes?
Because a track record that only shows the winners isn't a track record, it's marketing. The What I Got Wrong ledger exists specifically to keep every published error on the record — including the two that are still unresolved. That's the part that actually demonstrates discipline, not the returns.
Why does this site exist?
Because I genuinely like doing this. I read earnings transcripts and 10-Ks the way other people read box scores, and I got tired of that interest living only in a private spreadsheet where a bad call could be quietly rewritten after the fact. Writing every thesis down, dating it, and reporting on it later is what turned "I like researching stocks" into an actual practice instead of a hobby I only had to answer to myself for.
Who's actually behind this?
One person — Aydin Ali. There's no team, no fund, and no outside capital. The name is a banner for a personal research practice, not a firm, and the site says so plainly rather than implying otherwise.
How often is this actually updated?
A full letter roughly monthly, shorter interim notes when something real happens between letters, and dated news writeups tied to specific holdings as events occur — not a static page that quietly goes stale.
The Weekly Note
Follow the process, week by week
What moved in the book, what I'm reading, and any changes to the positions — the same honesty as the letters, more often. See exactly what an issue looks like before you sign up.