“A column currently掲載 in Toyo Keizai ONLINE” The strange world where not flashy things are sold as flashy

Good morning, this is Matsushita.

Today is the Makoto Investment School

FX Investment Capability Development Course and,

the Trading Research Meeting's開催日です。

In the foreign exchange market, the USD/JPY has

plunged recently, confusing market participants.

However, this yen appreciation is not surprising,

and is a movement as I taught in the class two weeks ago

before.

In that sense, the sharp plunge in the Japanese and U.S. stock markets, from early to mid this month,

is also a movement as planned.

Participants today in the class,

and individual investors are beginning to understand that

making a profit in investments is not a flashy affair.

They are starting to understand that.

Some members of the research meeting

are already making a profit through steady, non-flashy work.

Making a profit in investments is not flashy.

By reading books, watching videos,

attending seminars, and studying,

you form a hypothesis called a trading rule,

test it on past charts,

and when you confirm a certain level of effectiveness,

you verify it in actual trading.

This is how it works, to some extent.

Every investment follows this cycle.

Even if the profits look flashy,

even if you achieve annual yields of 100%, or sometimes 1000%,

the same principle applies.

Even if the profit numbers appear flashy,

the daily work you actually do is

never flashy.

Yet every day we are confronted with advertisements on the Internet related to investment

that promise investments in a very flashy way.

The truth is not flashy, but it is marketed in a flashy way.

The truth is not flashy, yet it is sold in a flashy manner.

And it is incredibly flashy.

Because we are always exposed to such things,

individual investors become numb to the idea that investment is flashy.

Then they are drawn to flashy things

and end up losing money.

You end up losing both the money to buy products or materials

and the money to actually trade based on them,

believing in them.

In the end, nothing remains.

But what I teach in today’s class and in the research meeting

leaves a trace of progress and results.

Students and researchers

write with their own hands, think, practice,

and realize tangible results.

The members of the research meeting are walking a bit ahead,

and several of them achieved profits last year.

All of them are doing the steady work I taught.

Making a profit in investment is not flashy.

In a sense, making a profit in investment can even be

a dull endeavor.

If you continue to mistake investment for something flashy,

your funds will not grow, so

please change your mindset quickly.

Profit begins from there.