The market this week continues to maintain a trend of fluctuation and adjustment, and some high-quality stocks that have been mistakenly sold off have shown signs of refusing to fall and beginning to rebound. At present, market confidence is still lacking, with significant divergence between bulls and bears. After three years of adjustment, many high-quality stocks have fallen to a value level, with some prices only at 30% or 40% of their highs. Warren Buffett once humorously said that only fools and fanatics try to buy at the lowest point and sell at the highest point. In fact, the lowest and highest points are only known in hindsight and cannot be known in advance. Therefore, laying out in the low area is a second-best solution because the optimal solution cannot be found. For high-quality assets, one can exchange time for space and patiently hold on to wait for the arrival of the next round of the market.

Currently, policies aimed at stabilizing economic growth are expected to be gradually introduced and implemented, and the strength of economic recovery in the second half of the year is expected to increase. Now is a stage where three turning points overlap: the economic turning point, the policy turning point, and the market turning point. Therefore, at this time, one must maintain confidence and patience and not fall before dawn. In times of market downturns, confidence is more important than gold, and the most important qualities for value investing are patience and waiting. Because in the process of stock investment, the vast majority of the time is actually spent in patience and waiting. Investment is actually a story of patience and waiting.

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95% of the time in the A-share market is spent in fluctuation and consolidation, with only 5% of the time being rapid rises. We need to use 95% of the time to wait for that 5% of rapid rise time in order to have the opportunity to grasp good companies. In fact, even for those long-term big bull stocks, the time of rapid rise only accounts for 5%. You cannot buy before the rapid rise comes and then sell when the peak is reached; only a god can do that. For those big investors who have achieved significant wealth growth through stock investment, they are basically growing with good companies, rather than trying to catch the fastest rising stage and avoiding the time of fluctuation and consolidation.

To make an analogy, investing in stocks is like a farmer planting crops and a fruit farmer planting fruit trees. The farmer selects good varieties to sow, and the fruit farmer selects good fruit seedlings to plant. After watering and fertilizing, all the efforts have been made, and the rest is waiting, waiting for the crops to grow and mature, waiting for the fruit trees to bloom and bear fruit. Of course, we also need to pray for favorable weather, sowing in spring and harvesting in autumn. After buying stocks, the rest is to wait patiently, because you cannot predict the fluctuations of the market trend, especially short-term fluctuations. Holding high-quality stocks still is the best investment strategy. However, many people cannot do this seemingly simple thing, because in the process of staying still, the market has temptations at every moment, leading people to always feel that they should do something, always unable to control their restless hands, and hands are always idle. Some people even jokingly say that in the stock market, "guarding stocks" is harder than "guarding widowhood."

The difficulty of investment success is reflected in the fact that in a considerable amount of time, the input and output are often not proportional. Sometimes the more diligent you are, the more you lose. It is best to be a lazy person in investment and minimize the frequency of operations. Warren Buffett once humorously said, "I have made more money with my buttocks than with my head." In a sense, more important than frequent decision-making is patient waiting. Many times, wealth is waiting, and if difficulties and setbacks are encountered during the waiting process, it can be understood as patience. No one can succeed easily, and waiting and patience should be the norm for investment success. Today's patience is for the glory of the future. In summary, waiting and patience are excellent qualities that investors must possess, and they are also the most brilliant technical means in investment.

Once, Buffett's good friend Bezos asked him, "You hold annual shareholders' meetings every year, disclose investment concepts in the annual letters to investors, disclose your positions in the annual reports, and your positions remain unchanged for many years. But why can't anyone copy your homework successfully and become the richest person like you?" Buffett said meaningfully, "Because no one is willing to become rich slowly like me." The biggest taboo in investment is to seek quick success and instant benefit. Many people find it hard to endure the slow rise or repeated fluctuations of the stocks they hold for a long time and hope to see big rises every day. Buffett once said, "If you buy stocks and then rush to see if they have risen significantly the next day, it is the most foolish behavior." In fact, investing is to be a shareholder of a good company and buy the company's equity. As long as the company's operations are good in the long term, even if the stock price fluctuates in the short term, it should not affect your confidence in holding the stock.

In the long run, the rise of good companies will bring successful returns to investors. For investors in the secondary market, investment returns usually come from three aspects. The first is corporate growth, which is the most fundamental source, that is, growing with great companies, and this is also where Buffett has obtained the most investment returns. The second is the increase in valuation, which is related to market liquidity. When liquidity is abundant and market confidence is strong, valuations often rise. The third is to earn money from trading opponents, that is, to earn money from the market by earning price differences.

Among these three aspects of returns, the first one, growing with great companies, is relatively easy to grasp. The second one depends on whether the market environment is a bull market. In a bull market, valuations will naturally rise, but in a bear market, valuations will fall. The third, earning money from trading opponents, is actually earning money from the market. Munger clearly said, "I don't earn money from the market because earning money from the market actually assumes that you are smarter than your trading opponents, and your trading opponents are willing to sell to you at a low price, and another trading opponent is willing to buy at a high price. This assumption is often not valid. Moreover, you also have to assume that your trading opponents are just stupid enough. If your trading opponents are stupider than you and very stupid, it is also possible to drive down the stock price, so that after you bottom fish, you may fish at the halfway up the mountain; the same is true when the price rises, your trading opponents may push the price to a bubble level, and even rise by another time, at this time you may miss the market, so earning money from the market is actually a very unreliable source of income.

From past investment experience, in the ups and downs of the market, it is crucial to respect common sense. For investors, it is necessary to avoid buying crazily at the high point of a bull market and to avoid cutting meat at the low point of a bear market, or not daring to buy. Investors who can defeat the market in the long run must maintain a good mentality, learn to dance with bear markets, and learn to restrain their greed in bull markets. When the market generates a large bubble, they should leave decisively.