How Duan Yongping might approach Investing
Investing. People talk about it like it’s some kind of game, a way to get rich quick. They chase the latest hot stock, the one everyone is whispering about. They think about prices going up and down, day by day, even minute by minute. This is not how sensible people think about money or about building anything of lasting value.
Buying a stock, you must remember, is not just buying a piece of paper. It is buying a piece of a real business. A business with people working, with products being made, with customers who use those products. You need to understand that business. What is its model? How does it make money, and more importantly, how does it *keep* making money over many years? Does it have a real advantage, something that protects it from others?
This is why I have a “Stop Doing List.” It’s far more important than a “To Do List.” What will I *not* do? I will not chase fads. I will not invest in businesses I don't understand. I will not use leverage, that borrowed money that magnifies both gains and losses in ways that can quickly ruin a man. I will not try to time the market. The market is a creature of emotion, and emotion is a terrible guide.
I look for businesses with strong management, a good culture – a culture of ‘benfen,’ of doing things the right way – and a sustainable advantage. Then, I buy it. And I hold it. The goal is not to be right every day, but to be right over decades. A simple mind, an ordinary mind, focused on the underlying reality of the business, that is what is needed. The rest is just noise.
Imagined perspective — an AI synthesis grounded in Duan Yongping’s recorded ideas and methods, not a quotation or a statement they actually made.