November was one of the months where I studied intensely. Even though I went to Istanbul towards the end of the month, I studied an average of 4 hours a day. The most important thing I learned this month is that in college, one really doesn’t have any time to build a startup or dedicate time to hobbies; especially if you are in a difficult major. All my days pass the same way; wake up in the morning, go to the library, study until the evening, come home and rest. The weekend is the same. Fortunately, I study together with my friends and since I can study with discipline every day, it doesn’t cause a problem, I’m used to it now.

No matter how hard it gets, when I think about it, I really say I’m glad I chose to study mathematics, especially at a regular university rather than a technical one. We are seeing pure mathematics exactly as I wanted, and no matter how difficult it is, it is quite enjoyable.

Last month, I also bought myself a Kindle to improve my reading habit. I read for half an hour to an hour before going to bed. The books I read are not about investing and economics, but consist of classics. I will write about the books I find beautiful in the future.

As for the important economic/political developments that took place last month;

• CHP 39th Ordinary Convention: At the convention held in the last days of November, Özgür Özel was elected as the chairman for the 4th time. Intra-party leadership debates are expected to be shelved for a while with this result.

• Investigations Against Municipalities: Investigations and detention news initiated with allegations of “corruption and irregularity” regarding some municipalities such as Adana and Büyükçekmece raised political tension. While the opposition characterized this situation as “political pressure”, the government wing emphasized the “judicial process”.

• Visit of Pope Leo XIV: Head of the Vatican State, Pope Leo XIV, came to Istanbul and Iznik as part of an official visit. This visit went down in history as an important diplomatic step in terms of both interfaith dialogue and Turkey’s faith tourism potential.

• Poll Results: According to the AREA Research poll published in November, it was seen that CHP maintained its position as the leading party, but the rate of undecided voters was around 23%. This situation shows that voters maintain their distance from the current political parties.

• CBRT and Inflation: Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan stated that the disinflation process continues but its pace has slowed down. November inflation data and the CBRT’s tight stance messages postponed interest rate cut expectations in the markets.

• Credit Limitations: Imposing a budget limit on Treasury-backed Halkbank loans increased access to finance concerns, especially on the side of SMEs and tradesmen.

• Industry Inspections: The Ministry of Industry tightened its inspections for non-compliant products and imposed fines amounting to 278 million TL. This step was interpreted as a move to increase production quality and prevent unfair competition.

• COP30 Climate Summit (Brazil): At the summit held in Belém, countries conducted tough negotiations on climate finance and emission targets. Although the summit closed with the message that “climate cooperation is still alive”, the inability to take radical decisions was a subject of criticism.

• Ukraine Peace Talks: The Ukrainian delegation going to the USA to discuss the peace plan raised questions about whether a new window could be opened for the resolution of the war through diplomatic means.

• US-China Trade “Truce”: A one-year “trade truce” reached between the two superpowers on lowering tariffs and loosening export controls gave global markets a breather. This development reduced the uncertainty created by the trade wars in the short term.

• Commodity Records: While silver broke an all-time record; gold also continued its upward trend. This situation shows that investors’ search for a safe haven and industrial demand (for silver) continues.

• Tech Stocks Rally: In the US stock markets, sharp upward movements were seen in technology stocks (Nasdaq) with the strong balance sheets of tech giants like Amazon and artificial intelligence optimism.

• Aviation Crisis: Grounding some Airbus planes for technical reasons led to capacity problems and stock-based fluctuations in the aviation sector.

(Summarized using Artificial Intelligence.)

If I need to compare my portfolio return with the BIST100/SP500 indices; my portfolio dropped by 2.82% in November. In comparison, the BIST100 index dropped by 1.64% in dollar terms, and the SP500 dropped by 0.22%. The main reason my portfolio dropped more compared to these indices is that my portfolio is heavily weighted in artificial intelligence and technology. In October, the S&P500 index had dropped by 1.92%, and the BIST100 had dropped by 1.25% in dollar terms. Alongside these, my portfolio had increased by 8.10%. Just as my portfolio increases more when the index goes up a lot, my portfolio drops more when in uncertainty.

Let’s get to my investments in order;

In November, thanks to my monthly investment that I make every month, I added a total average of $110 to VTI and VEU funds. Besides this, I completely closed my SMR position. Even though I think the Nuclear Energy sector will grow a lot in the future, on the one hand, I know that SMR’s increase in the past period was artificial intelligence-driven, and frankly, this situation did not give me confidence. I will explain the reason in more detail in the article I will write this week on the subject of artificial intelligence. I also reduced my GOOGL stock and sold 1.5 shares. Actually, even though I didn’t want to sell, I promised myself when buying GOOGL that I would do some profit realization by selling a bit when it reached the $300 price, and therefore I made a small sale. I don’t plan on making more sales in the future.

When looking at my Other Funds & Stocks, the only thing that stands out is the 5 BIST stocks. Even though I think long-term investing in Borsa Istanbul is problematic, I am of the opinion that much better results can be achieved by investing in the short-medium term. For this reason, rather than finding stocks myself, I copy the model portfolio of a content creator every month. We will see together what kind of result I will reach in the long term. 5 stocks change every month, and I buy the new 5 stocks in the same amounts at the beginning of the month.

Finally, I also made a tiny crypto investment. For now, I only did it so it shows up in the portfolio, but when Bitcoin reaches the price I want (a 60% drop from ATH), I will increase my purchases. I will draw a more detailed roadmap regarding Bitcoin.

15% of my portfolio is covered by fixed income/gold. Against the stock market that has started to rise increasingly, I hold fixed income and cash products for hedging purposes.

My CS2 investments are like this. I have now reduced buying extremely and I am just waiting. I adjusted the $2,200 here in such a way that I won’t be upset even if it drops to 0 instantly. These investments, which I made because I trust myself personally, are truly more volatile than even Bitcoin. During the month, it swung towards a plus and a minus, but I was prepared for this and knew it would be like this.

And these are my cash positions. $1349.8 is waiting to be invested in cash.

Against the market that is rapidly rising day by day and starting to move away from rationality, I will increase my hedge positions, especially gold. It is obvious that we are increasingly approaching a bubble, and in the face of this, I want to have a less volatile portfolio.

That’s all for this month, see you next month…