You Must Believe!

这里表达的东西其实和苹果无关。昨天下午和一个朋友打球时，他告诉我他上午“又”买苹果了，大概$560/股。记得上一次他买苹果是当苹果$360的时候，结果买了以后就设了个$399的卖单。我劝他别卖，因为这价太便宜，可他最后还是卖了。今天，其实苹果还是那个苹果，但市场价到过600多以后，似乎在500多下…

Source: http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201232603328288/

You Must Believe!

> By Duan Yongping · his NetEase blog (nteswjq.blog.163.com, now closed; read from web archives) · 2012-04-26 · [Original link](http://nteswjq.blog.163.com/blog/static/1269981201232603328288/) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20120430075849/http://nteswjq.blog.163.com:80/blog/static/1269981201232603328288/))

What I'm expressing here actually has nothing to do with Apple.

Yesterday afternoon, playing golf with a friend, he told me he had "again" bought Apple that morning, at about $560 a share. I remember the last time he bought Apple was when it was at $360, and after buying he set a sell order at $399. I urged him not to sell, because that price was too cheap, but in the end he sold anyway. Today Apple is actually still the same Apple, but after its market price has been above 600, it seems much easier to put in a buy order in the 500s, heh.

Actually, selling a stock has nothing to do with your cost, and buying a stock has nothing to do with what price it has reached. The most important, and in fact the only important, thing is the company itself.

When you really can completely ignore the market's influence, your understanding of value investing can be said to be spot on.

Of course, understanding value investing doesn't mean you'll make money in the stock market, just as people who know they should "do the right thing" don't necessarily have the ability to "do things right."

"Doing things right" takes many years of hard accumulation; it isn't something you can learn by reading a book or two or visiting a few "masters'" blogs.

Probably because Apple has fallen hard these days, yesterday morning a friend called to ask me what had happened to Apple. I said I didn't know, but I repeated what Master XiFu in Kung Fu Panda says (that's "shifu," master, in Cantonese; Hollywood people probably think all Chinese speak Cantonese): "You Must Believe!"

Many people have read many books and know many investing dogmas, but they just don't believe. Maybe they don't believe because they don't really understand. Who knows.

Whatever you do, don't understand this "believe" as simple self-confidence. Building this "believe" takes many years of experience and understanding, though it doesn't mean that having many years guarantees understanding. I've seen many people with many years of "experience" who have actually never really spent time trying to "understand."