Looking for what lies beyond investment... by Koichi Matsuo

"Look for what lies beyond investing..."

Introduction

For over twenty-five years, I have faced and lived with investing.

Investment includes various forms, such as personal investment (self-investment), stock investment, real estate investment, and more. Among them, the most satisfying for me is the investment known as self-investment, which is an undeniable fact. I intend to continue my investment life, not only with self-investment but also by challenging stock investment.

Additionally, self-investment can be something you reward yourself with and an investment to enhance your skills and knowledge. I have come to believe that by investing money not only in the former but also in the latter, as a person, I can expand my possibilities and lead a meaningful life.

Although the purpose of investing money varies, simply having the goal of increasing money is meaningless. Unless you have a target amount to reach, you cannot fulfill that purpose forever.

Dr. Napoleon Hill, in my book, The Thirteen Conditions for Wealth, states that merely wanting a lot of money is completely meaningless.

To enable the goal of increasing money, the book says you must set a deadline, a specific amount, and the price you must pay to obtain that amount. That is the true fact.

To achieve great wealth, you must first decide on a concrete amount, a deadline to obtain that amount, and the price you will pay to attain it. Only then can you stand at the starting line for wealth.

However, you do not need to pay a large amount as the price from the outset. Even a small amount can involve highly effective costs. For example, nowadays with online brokerage, it is possible to invest in stocks while keeping purchase fees low, so paying high prices does not necessarily guarantee effective stock investments.

Some people take courses at schools to learn about stock investment, but I do not recommend this at all. Often, people’s greed is involved, and I feel that those schools are mainly used to make money for the operators.

This book contains my past research results on investing in full detail, and I think you can purchase everything for about three thousand yen.

In investing, information matters, and I believe that the information from the company quarterly reports (Countrywide) alone is already valuable enough. Similarly, the information costs about two thousand yen, but how you utilize that information depends on your perspective toward investing, so you must cultivate your own view on investing.

In the coming era, investing is expected to become a required subject in middle school home economics. For readers of this book, I intend to convey everything I have learned about investing as long as space permits. I hope you enjoy reading it.

December 1, 2019 (Reiwa 1)

Written by the author.