Investment stages and mentality

Why does it feel increasingly difficult to make progress when investing reaches a certain stage?

Most investors will encounter a phase where they study K-lines every day, read many books, and frequent various forums, but their accounts show no significant progress, leaving them frustrated. I’ve also experienced this bottleneck and want to discuss why this happens and share some of my insights.

1. Early progress is fast because you’re catching up, but later, it’s about reinventing yourself.

When you first enter the market, learning basic concepts like stop-loss, compound interest, and diversification can quickly help you move beyond the novice stage and even earn some small profits. Progress is obvious at this stage, like a student improving from 30 to 60 points—hard work alone suffices. But when you reach 80 points, improving even one point becomes much harder because you’re no longer just acquiring knowledge; you must start questioning and overturning your previous logic to rebuild a cognitive system that suits you. For example, early on, you might think low P/E means cheap, but later realize cyclical stocks with low P/E can be riskier. Or you might initially believe stop-loss controls risk, only to later find that stopping too often means you’re missing the bigger trend.

2. What the books say is correct, but the market is too complex for textbooks to fully cover. Books often teach static logic, like what a margin of safety is or how to pick quality companies. But the market changes daily—news, policies, and liquidity all shift. The reality, you might buy a “good company” based on book logic, only for its financials to turn out fraudulent or the industry to face sudden regulation, leaving you blindsided. Another point: the market gets smarter. When a strategy becomes widely known—like the “golden cross” buy signal in technical analysis—the market often reacts early, so by the time you see the golden cross, it’s already at a peak.

3. Human nature is the biggest obstacle. Many people don’t lose because they can’t pick stocks but because they can’t overcome their psychological weaknesses.

For example, you shouldn’t chase highs, but seeing others profit makes it hard to resist. You know you should cut losses, but when the price drops, you hesitate to sell. These aren’t things you can fix by reading a few behavioral finance books. It takes deep reflection after losses to slowly develop reflexes—something that requires extensive real-world practice. The longer you invest, the more your experience can trap you. At a certain point, everyone develops their own style—some only do value investing, others only technical analysis. But sticking too rigidly to your approach means missing new opportunities. Value investors might dismiss trend trading, technical traders might ignore fundamentals, and macro analysts might study global trends but fail to pick a single good stock. This leads to knowing a lot but doing poorly. I accept uncertainty and no longer aim to be right every time. Investing isn’t fortune-telling; it’s a game. No one can buy and see the price rise every time. Pros win by playing high-probability moves and enduring low-probability losses over the long term—not by predicting perfectly. Remember: the right method can lose in the short term, and the wrong method can win in the short term. But in the long run, the market will reveal who’s right.

4. Ultimately, you must find your own approach. Some imitate Buffett, but he can hold for a decade without flinching, while ordinary people might last only three months. Others chase hot trends for quick short-term gains, only to end up buying high and selling low, making a mess. A strategy that works for others may not suit you. You must understand your capital horizon, risk tolerance, time, energy, and comprehension to build a system tailored to you. This is far more reliable than following the crowd.

In truth, the later stages of investing resemble a spiritual practice. It’s not about more knowledge but deeper thinking, steadier patience, and longer vision. I now pay less attention to noise and focus more on calmness, discipline, and cognitive structure.

Don’t rush. Take it slow. Treat investing as a lifelong journey—that’s the real path to long-term profits.$Alphabet(GOOGL.US) $Amazon(AMZN.US) $Meta Platforms(META.US) $Microsoft(MSFT.US) $AMD(AMD.US) $Coreweave(CRWV.US) $Nebius(NBIS.US) $Broadcom(AVGO.US) $Oracle(ORCL.US) $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) $SPDR S&P 500(SPY.US) $NASDAQ Composite Index(.IXIC.US) $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US)