Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival — arrogance is.
These past couple of days, the market has been a sea of red, and my inbox has been flooded with messages from brothers and sisters pouring their hearts out. While everyone’s pain is different, the ask is always the same: “Master Chi, we got hurt this time — can you talk about this awful market?” Of course I can. It’s been a while since I touched on this topic, and right now is honestly the perfect time to share some genuine wisdom — far more fitting than any ordinary day. People only truly open their ears after they’ve been stung and hurt. So today, let me speak freely about how I personally understand “losses” and the “gambling ecosystem of the market” after all these years.
First, I’m not trying to rub salt in your wounds. Master Chi simply wants you to understand: the moment you decide to participate in business or investment in this world, you must be prepared to take hits and absorb losses. There is no domain in this world — and there never has been — where you can scoop up money endlessly without paying a price. Making money is destined to begin with seven losses and three wins, slowly learning from the pain, until you reach break-even, and eventually tip toward more wins than losses. So even if your losses these past few days have been heavy, I firmly believe that over the long arc of your trading career, you will win it all back with interest. The condition is this: that after this battle, you develop the habit of thinking — winning with clarity, losing with awareness.
If you look back at what I wrote about the market roughly two weeks ago, you’ll find I made this point more than once: every year, in the stretch between New Year’s Day and the Lunar New Year, pools of capital go through repositioning and target selection. So unless something unusual happens, this invariably triggers a short-term withdrawal of funds. But don’t worry — the money will return. It hasn’t left permanently. It’s only a temporary retreat, waiting to identify new targets before re-entering at the right moment.
If you caught what I wrote back then, you should have been mentally prepared for this stretch of red — or even remained completely unruffled when it arrived.
Beyond cultivating that habitual vigilance toward the recurring “pre-Lunar New Year” risk period, Master Chi also hopes you’ll use this moment to honestly weigh your own standing. You need to think clearly: what role do you actually play in this bloodstained slaughterhouse?
Now, you’ll naturally assume you’re one of the predators — but have you thought about who your prey is? Who are your natural enemies? Which competitors pose a real threat to you?
Whether you make your living through investing or speculation, never make the mistake of thinking your only opponent is that candlestick and the numbers flickering above and below it. Behind all of this are real, living people — actual participants making real moves.
Once you recognize your ecological position in this food chain, you’ll have a much clearer sense of which slice of the profits you should be going after — and more importantly, which money you must never touch.
Let me give you an example. Over the years, Master Chi has been acquainted with a number of market operators and their inner circles — no business dealings between us, but in conversation, everyone would reveal their logic to some degree. And the logic these people always came back to was: earn only from the flock — never reach for money belonging to those who are stronger or better-connected than you.
And you know — five or six years ago, when these operators were at their most aggressive, every one of them was commanding tens of billions. So who could possibly be stronger? They didn’t need to say it out loud. They obviously wouldn’t dare touch those people. Since they couldn’t afford to, they didn’t. They only went after the flock — those weaker in intelligence, judgment, reaction speed, and composure.
Don’t feel ashamed by that framing. This game is simply big fish eating small fish. If you’re already a small fish, start by feeding on the plankton — the retail investors who are even less equipped than you.
How? Set aside value investing and speculation logic for now — not because they don’t work, but because they’re not very useful to you at this stage. Those are advanced courses for later. Right now, your one and only goal is to learn to catch trends.
What is a trend? Very simple. One sentence: get a rough read on where the wolf pack is headed, get a rough read on where the flock is moving, and position yourself in the space between the two — the window after the wolves have set their trap but before the flock has walked into it.
Take this pre-Lunar New Year crash, for instance. Isn’t it simply the wolves temporarily withdrawing, leaving behind a herd of sheep wandering aimlessly with nowhere to turn?
That’s the simple answer.
By the same logic, what you should be paying attention to is: which sectors and themes had capital visibly drained from them this time? And which sectors are quietly but firmly laying a foundation after the New Year? Answer those two questions clearly, and you’ll find a great deal of the underlying logic suddenly clicks into place — and you won’t be swept along by flock mentality. It really is that simple.
Honestly, Master Chi has always worried about certain overly confident friends — especially when I see readers in the comments declaring their approach is razor-sharp and extremely aggressive. I always feel a twinge of cold sweat for them.
Because there was a time I was exactly like that — feeling exceptionally capable, exceptionally smart, exceptionally precise, and winning what looked like considerable, even enormous, wealth in this game.
But later I realized: that wealth wasn’t something I created myself. It wasn’t the result of correctly identifying a target. It was that I had, without fully knowing it, been riding along with the people making the big plays — and I just happened to be a fraction smarter than most of the crowd. That was all.
It was from that point that I understood: in this food chain, I am not the dragon that rules the world, not the tiger that commands the seas, not the greedy and vicious wolf, and not even a powerful predator at all.
The ones who can truly be called predators are formidable beasts — deeply connected, flush with capital, immensely capable.
No comparison. Not even close.
So who am I? Just a small, unremarkable existence, waiting for the crumbs that fall through the fingers of these giants.
Once I understood where I stood, I also understood which wealth I could reach for and which I could not — and I gradually built an operating logic that delivers steady returns.
I’m not saying this to cut you down, or to put a ceiling on your future.
I just sincerely believe: if you’re going to make your living in this space, get the foundational logic straight first. Learn to be stable before you learn to be ruthless.
Does that make sense?