People only need to be rich once in their life.
1.
I accidentally brushed a good article with great literary talent and depth in the circle of friends, but it was a pity that it was quickly "violated" and blocked because of its sharp writing style.
This article is from Dai Boss, the author of WeChat WeChat official account. I couldn't help reading it several times because of its wonderful writing.
Although I can't share the original text, this article starts with revealing the gambling style in China during the World Cup, and traces it back to the gambling situation on mahjong tables in the Republic of China. Then it talks about the housing market, stock market and currency circle with gambling style everywhere in China in recent years. Wave after wave of "Chinese chives" have lost everything after wave of spending a lot of money, but they have appeared and been "harvested" continuously, which makes the author sigh:
" Since' life' can't be controlled by yourself, you have to rely on' luck' to turn yourself over and try. As for the two options of accumulating virtue and studying, you can only stand aside for the time being. When the chances of class upward mobility are getting smaller and smaller, it is the spiritual sustenance of the whole people to try your luck with all your eggs in one basket. "
This can't help but remind people of the critical sentence written by Hu Shi in the Republic of China in 193, when he witnessed the people rubbing hemp wildly:
"We have traveled all over the world, have we ever seen any advanced nation and civilized country willing to waste time and night like this?"
2.
China citizens' gambling is deeply reflected in the concept of ordinary people's investment, especially in China's stock market.
After the stock market skyrocketed in 215, the stock market crash in January 216 made countless investors who gambled all their money lose their life savings, and also exposed the imperfection of China stock market and its once-seriously overvalued valuation.
This year's stock market is still in a downturn. Recently, the closing points of A shares were once close to the lowest point during the stock market crash. No matter what the market is like, it is still the fertile ground with the largest number of retail investors, the highest turnover rate, speculation and the most lush leeks in the world.
as an ordinary investor, how should we get rid of the gambling mentality and make more rational investments?
In May this year, the reporting team of Red Weekly went to Omaha, USA with similar questions and had a two-hour exclusive interview with Buffett's partner Charles Munger.
In the interview, the reporter asked Munger how investors should be patient and how to establish a correct investment philosophy.
Munger replied that if investment is regarded as gambling in a casino, it will not be done well by gambling. Because you will be very concerned about the current results, and become impatient.
He advised investors in China to gamble less and invest more. Investment pursues a long-term result, not an immediate return like in a casino.
He said that some things are born, but some things can be trained the day after tomorrow, and patience is one of them.
Munger mentioned that there is a saying "long attention span" in America, that is, the duration of long attention depends on how long a person pays attention to one thing. This is a very desirable feature, because if you can think deeply and hard about a certain problem for a long time, you will be more likely to get the correct answer.
the reporter also asked, how can we cultivate and be rational for those investors who have no patience?
Munger repeatedly emphasized the importance of reason.
He said that reason means seeking truth from facts. However, most people only see what they want to see when they look at the world. If this is like looking at the world through deformed glasses, no matter how much knowledge or patience there is, it is useless. Because the world you see is out of touch, without a rational attitude, nothing else is useful.
Munger suggested that an ordinary person should work hard to be rational, and pay attention to and care about it. If a person doesn't care about himself, he won't try to be rational, and you may be irrational all your life, so you will inevitably suffer bad results.
Munger said that it takes a lifetime of hard work to cultivate rationality, and a lot of study, reading and practice are needed.
3.
Mark Twain, a great American writer in the 19th century, earned a huge sum of money for his whole life, but few people really knew that his last life was poor.
his money was not squandered, but wasted by his reckless investment.
After becoming famous, Mark Twain started a publishing company, but he owed a lot of debts because of his poor management. In order to pay back the money, he decided to enter the stock market, trying to make a fortune in the stock market and bring it back to life. Unfortunately, he didn't make a fortune in the stock market, and the result of many investments was still failure.
In his short story "Wilson with a Stupid Head", he summed up a famous saying: "October is the most dangerous month for stock trading; Other dangerous months are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February ".
Mark Twain warned everyone in a humorous way that it would be dangerous to enter the stock market without reasonable investment.
There are many similar celebrities in history. For example, McClane, the inventor of the container, used to be one of the richest businessmen in the United States, but in the end he owed more than one billion dollars in debt because of a desperate investment in the oil industry, which led to the bankruptcy and decline of individuals and families.
There are only a few such examples. We must know several people around us who used to be very prosperous and had a decent life, and fell into bankruptcy and poverty because of an investment failure or business failure.
In fact, it is not easy for a person to spend all his money as long as he does not gamble, take drugs or borrow usury, but if he is too impulsive and hasty in investing, he may quickly go bankrupt and lose all his money.
After bankruptcy, this kind of people often lament that their lives are not good. In fact, the root of the problem is their knowledge and way of thinking.
It is precisely because of the lack of awareness of risk prevention that even if several investments are lucky enough to succeed, one will encounter waterloo, and all the money earned before will be lost, and even a huge debt will be owed because of improper use of leverage.
risk awareness is the most basic quality of an investor. Many people only consider the benefits when doing things and investing, completely ignoring the risks, so they will simply and rudely adopt the strategy of maximizing benefits. Such a strategy is often very dangerous to people with risk awareness.
And those who are risk-conscious often deliberately avoid such mistakes. They will be much safer when they do things and make decisions, even if they earn less every time, the result will be much better in the long run.
Buffett once said a very philosophical sentence: A person's life is very long, and it is enough to be rich once.
The implication is that we must be risk-conscious and avoid the mistakes that make all our efforts fall short, instead of desperately seeking more wealth for quick success.
Interestingly, in many families in China, husbands complain that their wives spend money indiscriminately on clothes and cosmetics, but they waste a lot of money on investment and pay "tuition fees". They often don't realize this, they are not only stubborn, but also always look forward to turning over and returning to their roots, and constantly smashing more family wealth.
this kind of investment has already deviated from the essence of investment: the growth of wealth. In order to make wealth grow, it is not enough to work hard and make money, but also to learn how to hold on to wealth steadily.
4.
Munger once joked in a public interview: "In America, guess who lives longer? They are professors, judges and value investors. And who has the shortest life? It's people who run red lights, drink and smoke too much, and there are short-term traders. "
Munger's statement is not groundless. In the United States, traders who operate short-term trading and gamble are often in poor physical and mental health. They are stressed and nervous, thinking about making money every minute, and most of them like to relieve their pressure by smoking and drinking, so short-term traders "walk the fastest".
Although speculative stock traders may get excessive returns in the short term, over time, value investment is the winner in the final market.
There are many masters of value investment in this world, but there has never been a long-lasting short-term investor.
in the eyes of value investors, the most important thing in the market is the test of time. With enough time, value can be discovered by more and more people, and most people can only see the ups and downs of the stock market tomorrow and the immediate interests.
It is his old partner Buffett who has the same belief as Munger and has been persisting and practicing. Buffett began to write letters to shareholders in 1957, insisting on one letter every year, and has written 61 letters so far.
The contents of these letters, including how to select managers, choose investment targets, evaluate companies and effectively use financial information, are regarded as investment bibles by investors.
In every carefully written letter, Buffett will earnestly and repeatedly emphasize the importance of value investment and long-term investment with shareholders, believing in the power of time and compound interest.
Another entrepreneur who insists on writing to his shareholders is Bezos, the richest man in the world and the founder of Amazon. He started writing letters to shareholders in 1997, and has updated 2 letters so far.
The biggest feature of his letter to shareholders is that at the end of each letter, a "signature of personality" should be marked: "Keep paying attention to long-term value". This is also the business secret that Amazon has gradually become the most powerful technology company in the world from an e-book merchant website selling books.
from them, we can learn a lot about investment. And those ideas that have been repeatedly verified and proved to be effective and universal need us to instill and practice them seriously, repeatedly and persistently.
Sometimes the simpler the truth is, the more effective and eternal it is. You can't repeat this truth to yourself many times a day.
If you do the right thing in the right way, the result will definitely get better. If you continue to do the right thing in the right way for a long time, your ability and knowledge will definitely fly by qualitatively.
5.
There is such a wonderful description in Boss Dai's article that he regrets not being read by more people:
"In August, 1992, 1.2 million people flooded into Shenzhen with 3.7 million ID cards, snapping up new share subscription cards; In February 1993, crazy speculators poured into Hainan's real estate speculation, and there were 2 thousand real estate companies in Hainan Province with a population of more than 6 million. In August, 27, the crowd chasing the bull market lined up in front of the brokerage business department, and a few years later, they moved the team to the sales office and the civil affairs bureau. The madness and despair of this scene spell out all the pictures nourished by the gambling nature of Chinese people:
the bottom gambling, the middle gambling, and the rich gambling. All the rise and destruction in China's speculative history are in these twelve words. "
How many personal bankruptcies and family tragedies are rooted in "gambling on life at the bottom, gambling on wealth at the middle class and gambling on the country by the rich"? Of these heavy twelve words. And these twelve words are the mistakes and lessons that we should deliberately avoid in the future anyway.
When we completely delete the words "gambling", "speculation" and "getting rich" from the dictionary of life, and replace them with "patience", "rationality", "value" and "growth", then the future will definitely become better for both our individuals and families, as well as the society and the country.
Someone once said, "Investment is a survival game with low threshold but high death."
But Buffett pointed out a direction for us: "We don't have to kill the dragons, we can do well just by avoiding them." ? And this flying dragon is the lesson that each of us has learned from past gambling and speculation.
People's life is very long. We only need to get rich once through our own hands and struggle in the long river of time, and then it is enough to protect it well.