I'm a pediatrician who invests, and I write about money, investing, and building long-term wealth in public under the name Turkarius. This page is where I explain where my ideas come from, what I invest in, what I deliberately avoid, and why my real name isn't attached to any of it.
Why "Bear"?
In financial markets, a bear is a symbol of falling prices. Most people say the word with a little fear behind it. I decided to build a name around it.
I don't believe a real long-term investor should celebrate a rally. A rally only means that something you already own has become more expensive. If your investment thesis is still intact, a decline means the same asset is temporarily on sale. The rational response isn't always to sell. Sometimes, it's to buy more.
There's another reason I chose the bear. An unrealised gain and an unrealised loss have something important in common: neither is real yet. Both are numbers on a screen until you press that very tempting SELL button.
I press it rarely. Bear markets are not something I've learned to fear; they're part of the environment in which a long-term investment strategy has to survive. Over the years, I've come to see falling markets less as an enemy and more as a test of the shield I've spent years building.
The bear is plush because I spend my days with children. The suit is there because everything else on this blog was paid for in experience.
Where My Investment Journey Started
Before I became a doctor, I was a tailor's apprentice. I was a child. I was sent to a workshop so that the word labour would stop being an abstraction. It worked.
I've never been able to look at a price the same way since. Behind every product is someone's time. Behind every business is someone's work. And behind every price is a story about what that work is worth.
I grew up in a neighbourhood that doesn't produce many professionals. Out of my primary school class, I was the one who eventually came out the other side with a profession.
I got there the slow way: top ranks in the high school and university entrance exams, programming taught to myself in middle school, and my first real money earned by buying second-hand goods and selling them for a little more — also in middle school.
Then came medicine. Emergency rooms first, working as a general practitioner. Then paediatrics.
Somewhere along the way, I noticed a flaw in the plan I'd built for my life. I was earning money by working, but I couldn't work forever. I would get older. I would get slower. My time and energy were finite.
A body is not a business model.
That's when money stopped being the destination and became the tool. What I actually wanted was a shield — something that could keep working when I couldn't.
The Most Expensive Investment Lesson I've Learned
I found my first real investment the way Peter Lynch suggests investors often should: by paying attention to my own life.
It was a biscuit brand I kept seeing everywhere, in almost every shop I walked into. I was a student with barely any money to spare, but I put about $150 into it.
I was right. The stock went up, and then it kept going up.
That's exactly where I made my mistake. I started believing the rise would continue forever.
I had earned that money by watching the market. Then I risked it by no longer watching.
A year later, the biscuits began disappearing from the shelves. Stock wasn't being replenished. If I had still been doing the detective work that led me to the investment in the first place, I would have understood what that meant: the supply agreement hadn't been renewed.
Instead, I was watching the profit on my screen.
At the New Year meeting, reality arrived. The deal was over. Revenue expectations were cut. The stock started falling, and I placed a panic sell order.
It had peaked at $0.83. I got out at $0.69, already on the way down.
Then it fell to $0.11 — below the price I had originally paid.
I got out lucky. But luck is not an investment strategy.
What that trade actually taught me was more important: an investment thesis isn't something you own. It's something you subscribe to. You pay for it with attention, continuously, or it quietly expires.
How I Invest
My portfolio spans NASDAQ, NYSE, XETRA and BIST, along with bitcoin, precious metals and funds. My approach is simple: long holding periods, fundamental research, and very little trading.
The more useful list, however, is what I stay away from.
I don't invest in memecoins, memestocks, or anything that becomes interesting because of what people are saying about it rather than because of what the underlying business actually does.
I don't own Tesla or SpaceX. Not because I think they're bad businesses, but because the conversation around them often revolves around one man rather than the machine itself.
I want to own businesses and assets whose economics, products, and way of working I can understand and respect. I don't buy a personality. I don't buy fame. I buy the underlying asset.
About the Investment Returns You'll See Here
I write about my own results, including the good ones. There is a post about a three-month period in which a portfolio went from $12,000 to $88,000.
Numbers like that can be exciting. They can also be dangerously misleading.
Read them as a record, not a promise. They are the output of specific decisions made over a specific period, under specific market conditions that cannot be summoned on demand. And they sit on top of years of smaller, duller, less photogenic decisions.
If I showed you the $88,000 and never showed you the $0.69, I wouldn't be documenting my investment journey. I'd be selling you something.
What This Investment Blog Does — and Doesn't Do
There are three rules I try to hold myself to:
- Principles, not tickers. I won't tell you what to buy. Your country determines your taxes, custody rules, regulations, available markets and even which investments you can access. My portfolio is not a template for yours.
- Decades, not weeks. Markets are full of urgency. Most of it turns out, with enough time, to have been noise with good production values.
- Assets, not profit. Profit is a number that appears on a screen. An asset is something that continues to work while you sleep — and eventually, while you can't.
This is not financial advice, and I mean that as a description rather than as a disclaimer. I'm not licensed to advise anyone, and I don't know your financial situation, obligations, goals, tax jurisdiction, or tolerance for being wrong.
Why You Don't Get My Real Name
Think of it the way you'd think about Satoshi Nakamoto. Does it ultimately matter who he was?
I'm trying to carve something into stone in a language most people can read. What I want to outlast me is the method, not the man.
A name would mostly give you another reason to trust or distrust what you read before you've even considered the argument. I'd rather remove that shortcut.
You still get everything that matters: what I did, what it cost me, what I believed at the time, and the places where I was wrong.
If You Want the Next One
I publish every couple of weeks: practical essays about investing, money, markets, long-term wealth, and the decisions behind a portfolio — without the jargon, hype, or manufactured urgency.
You can subscribe here, or follow along by RSS if you'd rather keep your inbox to yourself.
