Moutai prices have crashed. Will it be embarrassing to treat someone to Moutai in the future?

A few days ago, a friend asked to borrow money from me—100,000 yuan, promising to pay me back within two weeks. I told her I haven’t lent money in a long time and I’d rather not lend this time either. She said it was urgent, and asked if she could just borrow 30,000. I said there’s no difference between 30,000 and 100,000—not lending means not lending.

She said, "Is our relationship not even worth 30,000? What if I die because I don’t have this money?" I got angry and said, "Then just go die," hung up the phone, and we parted on bad terms.

A few weeks later, a friend I hadn’t heard from in ages contacted me, asking if XX had tried to borrow money from me. The reason and the promised payback time were exactly the same. This friend had lent a few tens of thousands, and then the other person lied, claiming the money had been scammed and couldn’t be recovered.

It’s clear—she’s squeezing out the last of her credit, borrowing from everyone she can, just to scrape by a tough life.

My friend asked how I could be so wise not to lend money. Haha, it’s not about being wise—it’s just the lessons built up from many experiences of lending and never getting repaid—"If I lend money again, I’m a fool (dog)."

But after going through this enough times, the side effect is that it becomes harder and harder to trust others, and you start doubting so-called relationships. Most affections are just bubbles of fantasy you create for yourself.

Suddenly, I feel those women who obviously want you to spend money on them are actually pretty honest—at least they don’t lie about paying you back. One dares to ask, one is willing to give, nothing wrong with that.

In recent years, global wealth has been diverging in a K-shape—a tiny minority's wealth line goes up, while most people’s goes down. On one side, luxury homes in Shenzhen Bay sold 13 billion yuan in a single day, and even houses worth over 100 million are sold easily. On the other, Moutai’s price has fallen below 1,499 yuan across the board. Dealers who thought Moutai had hit bottom and stocked up for speculation are being liquidated, dumping their inventories. High-end consumption is collapsing miserably.

I often say in live streams: consume in a deflationary market, invest in an inflationary market; consume in a hyper-competitive market, make money in a bubble market—this advice seems to be getting even more valuable.

I say, in the coming years, focus more on learning investing and less on starting businesses. If you do start a business, go for asset-light models, like running a media account. It’s not because asset-light businesses have higher margins, but because the risks are lower.

The reason to learn investing isn’t necessarily because you’ll make money, but because investing helps you build a real understanding of how the world works. It pushes you to seek higher quality information, see the truth more clearly, and understand where global capital is really flowing and into what types of assets.

After investing for a while, you’ll realize that most voices in the world are just noise, or even outright wrong. The money you make from investing is just a reward for seeing the world more clearly.

I like a market where you can go short and criticize—one that lets me sleep soundly, even if frequent negative news causes big drops. Such markets are healthier, more transparent, and more mature. People who seem perfect always have huge hidden flaws. Only by exposing your true nature and flaws can you really be together.

Because if criticism is not free, then praise is meaningless.