About
One student, one book, one written standard.
A public record of how one student investor thinks, sizes risk, and stays honest about being wrong — run by Aydin Ali, governed by a written Investment Policy Statement.
AEA Capital Research is an independent research initiative founded and managed by one person. There is no team, no fund, no outside capital. The name is a banner for a personal research practice, not a firm — stated plainly, on purpose, because the entire point of AEA is to be honest.
Student-Built Project
A research practice, built and owned by its author.
What I do myself
I run AEA Capital Research end to end: selecting questions worth investigating, reading filings and source material, forming and revising investment theses, writing each research note, and managing the site as a living record. The work asks for an integrated view of a business — strategy, operating execution, capital allocation, competitive position, and risk — rather than a ticker-first conclusion. Market-data feeds and other public tools help keep the factual record current, but the judgments, explanations, and responsibility for what is published are mine.
This is not a claim to have investing figured out. It is a public learning laboratory: a place to document evidence, state uncertainty, test an idea against a counterargument, make and defend a recommendation, and revise the record when the facts change.
Student & Educational Purpose
A learning practice, not a professional platform.
I am a community college student preparing to transfer into a rigorous undergraduate business program. AEA Capital Research is an educational practice: a way to learn how to read a business closely, make a decision with incomplete information, and explain the reasoning clearly enough for someone else to challenge it. It is not investment advice, a client service, or a firm. The point is process over performance — writing the thesis before the outcome, sharing the risk case, and learning in public when the evidence changes.
I'm a business student at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). AEA Capital Research is where I turn classroom frameworks into a durable practice: asking sharper questions about a business, weighing competing priorities, making my reasoning legible, and revising it when the evidence changes. It started in 2022 and is built to remain useful wherever my education and career take me.
Where I Am Now
Coursework informs the questions; the work has to answer them.
Introduction to Business gave me the vocabulary to ask how a company creates value and what makes a competitive position durable. Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management made the question more practical: who is the customer, what has to work operationally, and where can execution fail? Composition courses reinforced the complementary discipline of making a claim clearly enough that someone else can challenge it. Those are useful starting points, not credentials; the filings, sources, and counterarguments still have to carry the weight.
That is the standard this site tries to meet. Every position has a written thesis, a risk case, a cross-functional view of the business, and a place in a rules-based sizing structure; when a rule breaks or a view changes, the record is updated rather than quietly rewritten.
Learning in Practice
Three habits carried from the classroom into the work.
Not a course list — a few ways academic frameworks become more useful when tested against real evidence.
| Coursework | What it teaches | Where it's deployed on this site |
|---|---|---|
| BUS 100 Introduction to Business |
Looking past a product story to the customer, competitive position, and economics underneath it. | The business-model and competitive-positioning work in each position's Investment Thesis and Bull/Bear case. |
| BUS 116 & BUS 165 Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management |
Connecting a business idea to operating reality: execution, customers, and the decisions that make growth durable or fragile. | The operating questions behind each thesis, especially where a company needs to convert a market opportunity into repeatable execution. |
| ENG 111 & ENG 112 College Composition |
Writing a claim with evidence, then revising it when the argument does not hold. | The cited research notes, dated theses, and post-mortem record that make changes in view visible. |
What I Want Next
Test the work in a stronger learning community.
At the next undergraduate business program I join, I want to move this practice out of a one-person feedback loop and into a community where ideas are debated, improved, and held to a higher standard. I hope to contribute research and write-ups to student investment organizations, take on cases where finance intersects with strategy and ethics, and learn alongside peers who see risks and opportunities I may miss.
The goal is not to turn AEA into a credential. It is to become a better collaborator and decision-maker: someone who can bring a well-supported point of view to a team, listen when it is challenged, and revise it without treating disagreement as failure.
Sharing the Method
Finance is more useful when the basics are shared.
I have helped teach financial literacy and introductory investing at my mosque. Those conversations reinforced a lesson that also shapes this site: the useful starting point is not a stock tip, but a framework for asking better questions about risk, saving, diversification, and incentives. I want this work to remain understandable enough that peers who are new to investing can use its process tools without needing to copy its holdings.
Beyond Markets
Life cannot be reduced to a ticker.
Outside the research, I spend time around cars, golf, the gym, and soccer. They are different forms of attention: understanding how a machine works, accepting that a round can turn on one decision, building consistency over time, and contributing to a team. They also help keep the project in perspective. AEA is a serious practice, but it is one part of a fuller life and an ongoing education.
Behind the Process
Built through research, writing, and stewardship.
I research the companies, write the analysis, maintain the decision record, and manage the project day to day. Digital tools help organize data, test ideas, and publish the work, but they do not replace the responsibility to check a source, state an assumption, or own a conclusion. The site is intentionally imperfect and iterative: it improves as my questions, skills, and standards improve.
Why I Built This
$500, a written policy, and a decision to run it in public.
It began in 2022 with $500 of saved earnings and gift money. I've run it actively ever since. The goal was never to show off returns — plenty of people post their winners and quietly delete their losers. The goal is discipline and self-awareness: to build a track record I can't edit after the fact, where the reasoning is written down before the outcome is known. See the Founding Note for the fuller account of that period, including an honest note on the limits of reconstructing it from memory years later, or the Start Here page for the under-400-word version of this same idea.
What I Believe
Four ideas the whole site is built around.
Rules beat willpower. The decisions that matter are made under pressure. A written Investment Policy Statement, set before the moment of temptation, is worth more than good intentions in the moment.
Position sizing is the real risk decision. Being right about a company matters less than being honest about how much of the book depends on it. Most of my mistakes have been sizing mistakes, not stock-picking mistakes.
Say the risk out loud. Every position gets a bear case, and every rule break gets reported — including the position currently right at its policy cap, written up in the July letter's ongoing-risks section.
Beat the index or own the index. If this process can't beat a low-cost S&P 500 fund over time, the honest response is to own more of the index and say so — not to keep taking single-name risk for no edge.
How The Process Works
Four steps, every position, no exceptions.
- Written thesis
What has to be true for a position to work, grounded in primary sources and stated assumptions rather than a headline number.
- Risk case
What breaks it, and the strongest honest case for being wrong — not a disclaimer added after the fact.
- Sizing
Which IPS bucket it belongs in, how much is appropriate, and what existing exposure it adds to the rest of the portfolio.
- Review
A catalyst and a date to re-check, and a monthly letter measuring the whole book against SPY.
Verification
Nothing here is on the honor system.
Holdings are independently verified through Blossom, a portfolio-tracking service linked directly to my brokerage. The percentages, average cost, and returns you see across this site are all pulled from that verified record. Transparency is a core pillar of AEA — I used to withhold more detail, then dropped that policy, because the rigor of the process should hold regardless of account size. Company fundamentals come from Blossom and SEC filings, and price data from a market-data provider — each cited on the page where it appears. The full breakdown of what's cited, how often, and where is on the Sources & Research Log.
For a reader with less time: the Tear Sheet condenses this whole site to one page, and Learning in Practice shows how the habits behind it are developed and tested.
Research Note
An industry whitepaper, written the same way the site is run.
The Physical Limits of Compute
A full-length industry note on the 2026–2027 AI-infrastructure cycle — the thesis that the market is mispricing the AI buildout by focusing on accelerator design rather than the physical constraints underneath it: high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, and power. It includes a dedicated section arguing against my own thesis, and closes with exactly how the research changes what I actually hold. Sourced against the site's own Sector Comps Analysis and Portfolio Sector Overview, cited throughout.
Questions Worth Answering
Four fair questions, answered plainly.
These are the questions I want the work itself to be able to answer.
"Is this a hobbyist playing with fire?"
I chose to trade with my own capital, not a paper-trading simulation, precisely because it forces me to feel the consequences of a bad decision — something a simulation or a school club can't teach. The dollars are limited; the discipline is the same one I'd apply at a firm. That's the entire point of the Investment Policy Statement: it shows the process is built to scale even though the account isn't large yet.
"Is the site an echo chamber?"
The best evidence against that is the Portfolio Review & Retrospective section every full letter carries — a standing commitment to update a thesis in public when a market event proves it wrong, rather than only publish the calls that worked. Independent research has limits; the next level is having thoughtful peers challenge a thesis before action, not only after.
"The leverage risk"
NBIL, a 2x leveraged daily-reset ETF, is the one position on this site I'd expect the most pushback on — volatility decay on daily-reset leverage is real math, not a minor footnote. It's held as a small, capped tactical position (2.9% of the book against a 5% leveraged-sleeve cap), not a long-term holding, precisely because I understand that math rather than in spite of it. Sizing it small and capping it is the risk control; explaining why is the difference between a risky trade and a quantitatively aware one.
"Is this overshadowing the academics?"
The two aren't separate tracks — coursework at NOVA gives me frameworks to test against real evidence instead of leaving them in a notebook. The project is useful only when it makes a concept more precise, a question more honest, or a conclusion easier to challenge.
The point of AEA isn't to prove investing is already figured out. It's to build discipline in public, on the record, where mistakes can't be quietly edited out.