什么人适合做股票投资？

What kind of person is suited to investing in stocks?

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2010-02-04 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/126998120101483119417/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20100901162012/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/126998120101483119417/))

> This post includes letters from others or quoted material; Duan Yongping's own words are marked separately.

Ha, I suddenly feel replying this way is also good.

[Translator's note: a passage quoted from a blog reader's question in the comment section (unsigned) stands here in the original; it is not Duan Yongping's words and is not translated.]

Honestly, I don't know what kind of person is suited to investing. But I know that statistically about 80–90% of people who enter the stock market lose money. If you count interest, the share who lose money is even higher. Many people want very much to invest perhaps because they think money from investing is easier to make, or comes faster. As someone with experience both running companies and investing, I personally think running a company is still easier than investing. Although there's no essential difference between the two, in running a company you're always in a field you know, so the chance of making mistakes is small, while investing always means facing lots of new things and uncertainty. Also, investors very easily turn into speculators and take risks they shouldn't, while for a speculator to turn into a real investor may take much longer.

Investing and speculating are actually very different games, but they look very alike. Just as in Macau, those who run the casinos are the investors and the gamblers are the speculators. The reason casinos always have an endless stream of customers is that some gamblers always win, and the winners are always louder. As entertainment, gambling a little money is beyond reproach, but gambling your whole fortune isn't right. Yet I really do see lots of people gambling their whole fortune in the stock market.

In my personal view, actually anyone can invest, as long as you understand what you're buying and where its value lies. The skills speculation requires may be much higher; that's a field I don't really understand, and I don't plan to learn it either. When I have time I'd rather spend more of it with my family or play a few rounds of golf.

As a student who has just graduated, there's nothing wrong with going straight into investing, but your understanding of companies will naturally be weaker. But as long as you love what you do and know your weaknesses, if you learn slowly you'll always come to understand.

Even I, who supposedly have a lot of business experience, only felt my understanding of investing was fairly good after going through many setbacks. I asked Buffett what you mustn't do in investing, and he told me: don't short, don't borrow money, and most important, don't do things you don't understand. Over these years I've lost hundreds of millions of US dollars in investing, and every single loss came when I went against Old Buffett's teaching, while the big money I made was all made where I truly understood. As a student just starting out, you may know a lot from books, but for it to sink into your bones you still need to take a lot of losses. So if you go straight into the investing business, the most important thing is to be conservative; don't let one mistake knock you down for good. The only thing I can guarantee here is that you will definitely make mistakes.

In any case, investing is a very interesting job. If you're really ready, then come on. Are you really ready?

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