At the age of 26, I started trading stocks. From the age of 42 to 50, there was hardly any significant progress in my investment skills. At that time, I thought the reason for the small progress in my investment was that my investment level was already high, and there was nothing more to learn. It was only in the recent years that I realized it was not the case.

The market conditions of the recent years have taught me a lot, and my investment cognition has been elevated to a new level. In fact, in my 28-year investment career, the market conditions of the recent years are not particularly special. It's just that the feelings of seeing the same market conditions for the fifth time, the fourth time, the third time, the second time, and the first time are very different.

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Understanding a company is also like this. Some companies require us to observe and think for five years, or even fifteen years, to truly understand and comprehend them. Our ordinary people often need a long time to comprehend life and investment. Many couples who have lived together for a lifetime may not be able to truly understand each other. This is the difficulty of investment and life.

There are many things in the world that must be understood after many years. For example, I was born in an oil family and I am very familiar with the oil industry. However, when the international crude oil fell below 40 dollars a few years ago, I did not invest in any oil-related products. If I had bought a crude oil fund or invested in China National Petroleum Corporation or China National Offshore Oil Corporation at that time, and held it until this year, I could have made a huge profit.

Now I am reflecting on why I did not buy oil at that time. I found that it was because my understanding was not deep enough on two investment issues:

1. Investing funds in one's own knowledge and ability

It seems that Warren Buffett, the stock market god, has said something similar. I feel that I understood this truth long ago, but I did not do it well. The consumer and oil industries are the two industries I am most familiar with. However, I only heavily invested in the consumer industry and paid little attention to oil. For twenty years, there has been no oil in my investment portfolio. Instead, there are many industries such as pharmaceuticals, new materials, robots, and so on, which I do not understand very well.

Now the international crude oil has been fluctuating around 80 dollars for a long time. At this time, it is very difficult to be long or short. Now, I have missed the great opportunity to invest in crude oil. The next investment opportunity for crude oil may not appear until who knows when.

In the future, on a certain day in a certain year, if crude oil falls to around 40 dollars again, I will definitely enter the market to buy - the lesson is profound, and I can no longer waste such a great investment opportunity!In the final analysis, my previous understanding of the phrase "investing funds in one's own knowledge and abilities" was not profound, which is why the execution of stock investment was greatly discounted.

2 Investment should be willing to become rich slowly

"Becoming rich slowly" is a principle that almost every value investor understands. However, very few people can actually do it. Because becoming rich slowly does not conform to human nature. A few years ago, I did not invest in oil-related financial products, and another reason was that I was not very willing to become rich slowly at the time.

Five years ago, my investment philosophy was to buy and hold for three or two years to make money. At that time, I thought this was the pursuit of becoming rich slowly. Later, I was shocked when I saw the real-life case of the stock god Buffett holding BYD for 13 years, making dozens of times the profit, and then slowly selling.

Similarly, I also bought BYD, but I only held it for less than two years and sold it after making twice the profit. Compared with Buffett, my pattern is really too small. Ten years ago, I was also like this, holding Moutai for more than half a year, and I sold it at the break-even point. At that time, my cost of holding Moutai was only one or two hundred yuan!

In the final analysis, I am still unwilling to wait for ten or twenty years, and I have not truly become willing to become rich slowly. A few years ago, I knew that investing in oil below 40 dollars had low risk and high potential returns. However, I have not bought it. Because, I was worried that after buying, I might not get any returns for ten or eight years. It is this cognition that made me miss another major investment opportunity again.

Now I have a deep understanding of one point - that is, to invest one's own funds heavily in the investment varieties that one understands most profoundly, and then wait patiently for the future harvest with the spirit of planting trees for ten years. Only in this way can we obtain long-term and substantial investment returns.