“Investors who are overwhelmed by the gap between desire and reality” column published on Toyo Keizai ONLINE

Good morning, this is Matsushita.

For investors who trade in the market,

each has their own desires.

“I want to grow my funds to 100 million yen.”

“I want to achieve an annual return of 50% every year.”

“I want to make more than 10% profit every month.”

They have various desires.

Often these desires are almost baseless, hollow wishes without any grounds.

Carrying these desires into daily trading will

gradually reveal the gap between desire and reality.

The larger the desire, the larger this gap becomes,

and investors come to dislike this gap,

losing motivation and cooling their passion for investing.

If this happens, they cannot even achieve the basic goal

of increasing their funds.

Similar to other scenes in life, in investing as well,

sustaining motivation and drive is

most important for achieving goals and dreams.

However, if the gap between desire and reality becomes too large,

maintaining motivation becomes virtually impossible.

What we must be careful about here is that

the desires investors hold are often severely disconnected from reality,

and are selfishly formed.

If you arbitrarily hold unrealistic desires and

begin an impossible challenge from the outset,

when you realize the reality, you will have lost both motivation and funds.

This kind of absurdity happens among investors all the time.

To seize investment success and to fulfill your wishes,

first you need to understand real investing,

and then decide your goals and desires.

At the starting line toward investment success,

you should properly set your sights on the goal.

In that sense, the initial goal or desire should be

to acquire the ability not to lose capital.

This is the starting point.

Once you can do this,

you will systematically expand risk and

If someday you succeed in earning 1 million yen in a year,

by tolerating risks up to 100 times that amount,

you will continue to challenge toward 100 million yen in profit.

I believe that “investment is about earning profits in a planned way.”

This does not mean that you can always earn profits exactly as planned.

It means that “by controlling your own funds, you can plan and challenge toward profits.”

In investing, holding goals and desires is very important

and is one of the conditions for success.

However, if those goals or desires are too far from the essence and reality of investing, you will eventually

be overwhelmed by the gap and give up on investing.

And in a sense, that is your responsibility for having held such impossible desires.

First, learn the essence and actual state of investing,

then decide the goals and desires you will challenge

from here on.

That will be the start of your success.