I believe there are four levels of investment and life:

1. Ignorance

For example, marrying someone with a significant difference in beliefs, education, and family background. After marriage, they find that their values are incompatible, and eventually get divorced after many years.

Not knowing that buying lottery tickets is a low-probability way to get rich, they invest a lot of time and money in lottery tickets, and ultimately lose a lot of money. They are not aware of the fact that short-term market trends cannot be predicted, and frequently predict the rise and fall of market indices, resulting in huge losses in investment.

In fact, this stage is "stupid", and it sounds better to call it "naive". Most people have to constantly hit the south wall and finally wake up. Many of my current investment and life insights come from this stage through multiple failures and summaries.

Lack of cognition leads to not knowing the truth of things, and mistakenly believing that low-probability successful events are high-probability events.

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2. Knowledge

Many people know that smoking and drinking are harmful to health, but they still smoke and drink. They know that eating less can help lose weight, but they still can't control their appetite. They know that studying hard can make progress every day, but they still prefer to be lazy and indulge in eating, drinking, and playing.

In investment, they know that watching the market every day is not beneficial to investment, but they still can't control the impulse to watch the market. They know that investment requires planning, but they still often buy and sell stocks based on intuition. They know that stock investment requires a lot of reading and learning, but they still don't want to read any investment books.

People at this level, in the final analysis, lack self-control and cannot get rid of the manipulation of human nature. "A giant in words, a dwarf in action" refers to this kind of person. Most people in the world are this kind of person. They are driven by their own primitive desires every day, obsessed with the seven emotions and six desires, and cannot extricate themselves. In my view, their life is similar to that of a robot, and their life has already been designed by human nature.3 Knowledge and Strength

A minority of people can break free from the shackles of human nature. They can successfully lose weight, invest in stocks without constantly checking the market, quit smoking and drinking, engage in reading and learning every day, exercise, and avoid meaningless social interactions. In investment, they can make plans and operate according to those plans.

These individuals not only say it but also do it, which is a very small percentage of people. Most people do not have their strong self-control. I believe that this strong self-control may be a talent brought by genes. Only a very few people are born with this strong self-regulation ability.

For example, when a primary school teacher asks children to put their hands behind their backs during class, most children cannot keep their hands behind their backs for the entire class. A child who can keep their hands behind their back throughout the class is definitely not an ordinary child, and they are very likely to have a strong self-discipline ability innately.

4 Knowledge, Strength, and Wisdom

If "strength" is the ability to jump out of human nature, then "wisdom" is the ability to jump out and also jump in. This is a skill that can easily control oneself. He can switch his channels at will, even completely opposite channels. If he wants to indulge himself, he can start indulging immediately, and if he wants to be self-disciplined, he can be self-disciplined immediately.

In investment, he can do value investing as well as options, futures, and other derivatives. In life, he can be immersed in business management every day and also easily blend into the atmosphere of eating, drinking, and having fun. If a person can reach this level, it means that he can fully control himself and has reached the highest state of self-cultivation. The most difficult thing in life and investment is not to defeat the opponent, but to defeat oneself.