Many people have always wondered why it feels so hard to make money in China’s A-share market (A-shares).

Later I realized it may not be that the market is bad—many people are just using the wrong map.
Value investing can work in some mature markets because the rules are relatively stable, and companies can consistently deliver profits.
But once you get to A-shares, you’ll often find that the factors affecting the stock price are far more than just the financial statements.
Sentiment, capital, expectations, policy, game theory… sometimes these move even faster than performance.
So people joke that:
When you study A-shares, what you end up looking at isn’t Buffett, but The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
It sounds like a joke, but it’s actually saying one thing—
Here, it’s first about games, and only then about investing.
A few years ago, Hillhouse Capital (High瓴 Capital) made a lot of money from the tailwinds of the era, and Zhang Lei wrote a book called Value.
Later, market styles shifted, and many people who had been firmly committed to value investing also started to rethink.
It’s not that value investing is wrong.
It’s that every method has the soil where it can grow.
Leave the soil behind, and even the best seed may not sprout.
Crypto is even more interesting.
The way many projects play is very similar to short-term speculative logic from the past.
Tell stories, raise expectations, create hotspots, and wait for liquidity.
As for how good the product is, it’s often not the main thing.
Many people expect the project team to pump the price.
But reality is often that the team has already sold off most of their holdings long ago, and their attention has moved on to the next project.
What’s worth the most in the market is never the story.
It’s cash flow.
And the most expensive thing isn’t a sudden surge.
It’s trust.
Over the years, I’ve seen too many people.
It wasn’t that they lost to bad judgment.
They lost because they trusted the wrong people.
Later, it feels more and more like making money is one thing.
Partnering with the right kind of people is another.
An honest person may make money more slowly.
But at least they won’t treat your principal as their exit liquidity.
A person who doesn’t keep their word, even if they let you profit once, may still take away everything you’ve accumulated over ten years in a single move.
In the end, the market doesn’t just compete on knowledge.
It competes on character too.
Because returns can come from luck.
As for principal, many times you can only rely on selection.