In the past two days, the market has once again been fighting to defend the 3000-point mark. I dug out an old article, made significant revisions, and perhaps it might be helpful to everyone. This article is just for sharing and not for giving advice; everyone might as well listen to my one-sided words.

Some time ago, I discussed a few real estate topics, saying that in the future, real estate will slowly become like cars: the vast majority of cars depreciate as soon as they are purchased, becoming cheaper with use, with only a few maintaining their value, and an extremely small number appreciating in value.

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At that time, people will no longer hoard houses, just as no one hoards cars now. In the future, people's money will mainly be used for consumption to improve life and enhance the quality of life, while also driving the economy to form a positive cycle, similar to that in Europe and America.

Spending money on consumption may seem quite absurd, but it is almost the only way out for the economy. In the future, the engines of the economy will be consumer spending and foreign trade exports. As foreign trade declines, the proportion of consumption will become higher and higher.

Naturally, many people were dissatisfied with that article, perhaps because they have been abused by high housing prices and have developed Stockholm Syndrome. Many people think the current state is very good. The most ridiculous comment was:

Jiubian is now more and more like "why not eat meat porridge," have you forgotten that the people have the need for asset appreciation?

How could I not know that? Who doesn't have this need? The question is, can the need be realized? Does everyone have the need to be paid without working, and should the law also be enacted to solve this for everyone? And by the way, solve the single problem for 30 million bachelors?

Needs are just needs, and there has never been a saying in this world that "needs can be realized." Especially some needs are the collective anxiety of most people, which cannot be solved and do not need to be solved.

However, it should be noted that some people may have exploited this anxiety to realize their own asset appreciation. These things, I guess everyone has seen a lot over the years.

I slowly thought about it, and the big A is such a place, gathering those people with "appreciation anxiety," and then letting a small part of the market makers get rich first.Once upon a time, I often thought about reaping without sowing, about investing to make money. But why did I suddenly realize something? It's because of my hobby of running a self-media platform, which led me to meet many people involved in private equity.

You all know about private equity, right? It's where you give your money to a group of people, and they help you trade stocks. Society's understanding of them is extremely polarized; some people think they are all fraudsters, but many wealthy individuals do trust them. Based on my observations over the years, the vast majority of private equity firms indeed have some skills, after all, pure deception can't deceive so much money from the wealthy. You can doubt the character of the wealthy, but generally, you don't need to doubt their intelligence.

In the process of dealing with those private equity people, I was often amazed by their insights and found that they indeed had a deep practical logic. However, when looking at a span of three to four years, I noticed a problem: even those young masters with assets of tens of millions often made money for a few years, then had a particularly bad year, and if not careful, they could lose all the money they had made before, with their wealth fluctuating like a sine wave. Even those top masters, when looking at a long period, didn't really make much money. Some even suddenly disappeared, and upon inquiry, they were found to be working on sewing machines.

Gradually, even those particularly professional people couldn't get out of this big casino unscathed in most cases. Why should I, an amateur enthusiast, take the risk? I decided not to gamble anymore. Let me say it again, this article is not to give advice to everyone, but to see clearly one's own circle of ability. If you're not that material, don't gamble, or you'll easily lose miserably.

The most successful investment for ordinary people is probably the real estate investment in recent years. However, without any surprise, if you go and see, you'll know that now most places' housing prices are about to fall back to the level before the housing price surge in 2016.

Some communities look like their housing prices are still acceptable, but in fact, that's the transaction price of surrounding new houses, and the second-hand housing has not been transacted for a long time. When you try to sell a house, you find that you have to sell it at a discount of 20% or even 30% based on the current price. Even many houses in Beijing are like this, "Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen" now are the cheaper the house, the harder it is to sell, and the more expensive, the more it appreciates.

There's also the more frustrating "Beijing Surrounding Area". At the beginning, too many people wanted to buy houses in Beijing for appreciation, but Beijing didn't allow it, so they all rushed to the Beijing Surrounding Area. What happened later is well known, now the Beijing Surrounding Area is not just halved, it's knee-cut.

Too many people are superstitious about "appreciation". With some hard-earned money in hand, they think this money is not enough for old age, and they still need to find the next opportunity to invest, preferably like "cryptocurrency speculation", to get a hundred or a thousand times the return, and in the end, they almost all return in defeat.

Even a financial big (cheat) (liar) once said that if there were no such slogan as "asset preservation", the money of so many demolition households would not be given out, after all, the vast majority of the needs of the demolition households have been met, and the only thing not satisfied is the desire to make more money.

The famous liar Zhai Shanying once said, with your level of thinking, you can only listen to what you want to hear, you are born to be a leek, you will be cheated by me or by others, it's better to learn a lesson from me.Moreover, his approach is quite social, often promoting various conspiracy theories in the classroom. Normal-minded listeners are driven away by him, leaving behind a group of people who lack the ability to discern. After all, those who believe in conspiracy theories generally have a simpler mindset and feel that they are different from others, making them easily deceived, and thus they are easily fooled by him.

After being deceived a few times, one becomes more grounded.

To put it bluntly, people are unwilling to admit the limitations of their abilities and do not accept the reality that they are "ordinary." At the same time, they fail to realize that things like "asset appreciation," "preservation," and "successful investment" have extremely high barriers to entry, and they mistakenly regard many abnormal phenomena in the past thirty years as the norm.

In reality, we all have a common illusion that "90% of people think they are special and should be in the top 10%." Since they are so outstanding, they should try some unconventional actions. After a series of struggles, they end up with nothing, even losing their retirement savings. Of course, if you are indeed outstanding, you are not included in this discussion.

Overall, the difficulty of making money through investment is similar to that of earning money by working. If you haven't made money by working, it is highly likely that you won't make money through investment.

If you can make money by working, you are likely to lose money when investing, because each industry has its own barriers, and a single step can lead to a big pit. It is easy to get into trouble without attending a driving school and directly driving on the road. Even after attending a driving school, there are still tens of thousands of kilometers of driving experience between you and an experienced driver. Ironically, some people think they can fly an airplane without anyone teaching them.

In recent years, I have observed many investment experts around me and found a characteristic: they seem to rarely be able to withdraw completely. Later, I heard a big shot say, "The gambling god never leaves the table," which seems to make sense.

That is to say, if a person is gambling or stock trading, or engaging in other random probability games, if he has been going smoothly, he will definitely not leave the gambling table. Because on the gambling table, he can obtain a strong sense of achievement and self-fulfillment, and he will keep playing until he loses everything.

I have also seen many people who had already cashed out at a high position and stopped playing. After a break of one or two years, they couldn't stand it, the addiction was too strong, and they were very confident in their abilities. They continued to play and finally lost everything, leaving them with no money to play.

This mentality, if you think about it carefully, is actually very similar to many people who have some money in hand, such as having tens of millions or even tens of millions of dollars. Others may think they are quite good, but they themselves are anxious because everyone's position is probably in the middle of the circle, staring at people who are better than themselves every day, and the more they think about it, the more they feel that they should try again.So they went to gamble, oh no, to invest, and ended up investing in loneliness. After losing money, looking back, they felt that they were really brainless at the beginning, holding that money, couldn't do anything casually? Why did they have to gamble?

Some friends may say, so you mean everyone should not invest?

No, writing this article is not to teach everyone how to be a person, but mainly to share my experience: asset appreciation is not the norm, but a low-probability event. If you gamble on low-probability events, you are likely to end up with nothing. If you can't make money from highly certain things like going to work, can you make money from uncertain things?

When everyone gambles, they should know that it's not something everyone can do. And we ourselves are most likely ordinary people, and ordinary people don't have a high chance of winning in that kind of game.

I know many young friends look down on the word "ordinary people", thinking that they are born with talent and must be useful, and that one general's success comes at the expense of ten thousand bones. They think they are the general, and the people around them are the bones. It is not until they are in their thirties that 80% of people realize that they are one of the white bones with blue flames on the ground. Almost all stock investors have gone through this.

Admitting and accepting this is not shameful, and even many people do better after accepting that they are ordinary, because when they are hot-headed and want to go crazy, they can remind themselves "why should such a good thing fall on you", and they may avoid a big pit. Of course, if you are skilled and brave, it is not a problem.

To be more direct, the income that most people can easily earn is actually the annual GDP growth rate, or the interest earned by depositing money in the bank.

This part of passive income belongs to natural growth, and a little more is to take it from others, which belongs to the zero-sum game part. This part of the income is inherently risky, and it is doomed to be a few people eating meat, and most people can't even drink soup.

In real life, we often look down on the 3% interest of the bank. After all, with that little income, the money in our hands can't double in the next life, so why invest if it doesn't double? So we go to high-risk operations, and after losing money, we cry and shout. Even go to the government door to make trouble, demanding justice, isn't that funny? You still expect a good result from high-risk operations?

The most outrageous is the "desperate strike", middle-aged resignation, ready to use the money saved for many years to gamble in the casino to make a comeback, which is almost without exception, and ends up losing the bottom, because all the taboos of gambling are violated.Now that we think about it, the era of rapid growth has given many people unrealistic illusions or fantasies, believing that the economy can keep moving forward at a high speed, housing prices can rise steadily for twenty years, and wages can increase year by year. In fact, these are all special states during a special period. I recently conducted a survey on Toutiao, with 60,000 participants, half of whom have seen their income fall in the past two years, only 20% have increased, and the rest have remained unchanged. It is likely that this will be the norm in the future, with a minority of people's income rising, while the vast majority maintain stability or decline.

Speaking of this, there must be some friends who will ask, how will the common people live in the future?

Of course, it's by working. Isn't that common sense? In fact, even now, the vast majority of elderly people in China support themselves and work until they are old. Retirement benefits are a privilege enjoyed by a very few in this society, and the vast majority still have to find their own way to make a living, and those who rely on investment income for retirement are even fewer. In the future, the country's pension system should be more and more perfect, but the vast majority of people still have to rely mainly on themselves.

Epilogue:

At the end of the article, I still want to say that the era of rapid growth has ended, and the era of debt-fueled development is likely over. In the future, it is likely to enter a state of stable development, and many logics will have to change.

In the era of rapid growth, those who are more aggressive, faster, and more radical are likely to win. At that time, if you lent money to private equity, private equity would lend it to real estate companies, and it was normal to get a 10% return every year. Now, the explosion has occurred, and that money can't be taken out, and that's what happened to a certain plant system.

In the future slow growth era, the marginal return of hard work may decrease, and participating in gambling may even lose the last bit of family assets.

Pay attention to your inner self while taking care of your physical and mental health. Only by living longer can you be a winner.

The same is true for asset appreciation. In the past, whoever dared to use leverage was awesome, which is what Wang Jianlin said, Tsinghua and Peking University are not as good as being brave. In the future slow era, the more radical you are, the more you may suffer, zero-sum game, it is destined not to allow most people to share the benefits.

After everyone has suffered a few losses (it is estimated that many people have had enough in recent years), they will gradually stop thinking about getting rich overnight and realize that it is usually not their turn. In fact, from the crazy rush into the system in recent years, it can be seen that the vast majority of people have started to seek stability.The purpose of this article is not to suggest that everyone should stop investing in the future. Experts do not need to listen to me, and it's possible that the market has truly bottomed out this time, and what follows could be a long bull market. It's also possible that by the time everyone has finished reading my article, the market has already recovered to 3,000 points.

However, I understand that ordinary people like me need to have expectations and be aware that investing is definitely becoming more and more difficult. Most people, even in a bull market, may not make money. I have experienced two bull markets and have witnessed people losing more money during those times. Moreover, there is no such thing as natural asset preservation for ordinary people; the only thing that can preserve value is working.

The most important thing for ordinary people is to recognize their limitations and not to take reckless risks in unfamiliar fields. Even if they do participate, they should absolutely maintain caution and bottom-line thinking. In the long run, not losing money may be considered as making a profit.