WOULDer🗿

Patience is the only edge that requires no talent. The market quotes prices every day to tempt you into converting long-term assets into short-term decisions. You are not paid for being right — you are paid for staying still long enough for being right to matter.

Nikkei, Dec 1989: 38,915. Back above that level: February 2024. Thirty-four years. Cheap was never about the price. It's about whether the structure underneath still works. A low P/E is just the market telling you it thinks the business is dying slowly.

Being right is a statement about the world. Getting paid is a statement about time. Most correct positions die before they are proven — not because the analysis was wrong, but because the holder couldn't stay solvent long enough to be vindicated. Truth has no deadline. Capital does.

Compounding is not a math problem. It's a personality test. The arithmetic is trivial — anyone can compute 10% over 30 years. Almost nobody can sit still for 30 years while the number goes sideways for four of them, while a friend gets rich in a week, while the news insists the world is ending. Returns are paid to the person who can endure the interval between decision and proof. That interval is not a flaw in the process. It is the process. If your strategy requires you to feel smart every month, it's not a strategy. It's a mood.

If an investment keeps you up at night, it is not for you. Enjoy the process and wait patiently for returns.

A counterintuitive principle: when it comes to trivial matters, don’t just carry them along. Instead, avoid them wherever possible — set them aside, or simply cross them off your schedule. Skip them if you can. They eat away at the odds of getting your important work done.

Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. One is zero, zero is one. Turing-complete.

Investing is always a minority mindset. It is hard to stay independent and clear-headed amid the crowd. So step away from the masses and think for yourself.

Only those who can endure solitude earn the right to stay at the table.

Bull and bear markets in capital markets stem largely from human nature. For all the accumulated wisdom and lifelong insights great investors put into books, greed and fear cannot be tamed.

nvesting requires you to grasp the fundamentals of what you buy. Avoid any investment you fail to understand, and anything that keeps you up at night.

As a mature-minded person, when faced with what you dislike: endure it, leave it, or fix it. Never complain. Complaining is the dumbest and most futile act of all.

Long-termism is not merely a slogan. Behind this word lies the need to endure sustained pressure, persist through periods with no positive returns, withstand prolonged hardship, and keep going even when hope is nowhere in sight.

Win-loss rate is not what determines your investment returns. The core is to limit losses and capture large gains — cut losses decisively and let profits run.

There is one investment in this world that never loses money: investing in yourself — expanding your awareness and cultivating inner strength.

There is no future but the present, for the present is the future. Do the work in the present, and the future follows. Cling to what you cannot control, and suffering prevails.

Unlike the Industrial Age and the Internet Age, the AI era raises the bar for ordinary people to claim a share of the benefits. Dominated by capital and technology, this space is hardly accessible to the average person, and societal division is accelerating at an ever-faster pace.

Low returns are not the foe of compounding; severe losses are. When your principal is halved, getting back to break-even is enormously difficult.

The line between investment and speculation blurs when easy money flows. We are all Cinderella at the market ball: we know the feast will turn to pumpkins and mice, yet we dance on. The cruel truth — the clock has no hands.

Don’t trade what you don’t understand. Knowing your circle of competence is itself a skill.