Conclusion

Regular investing is easy. It's just an improvement on "choose carefully and hold over the long term" that needs no further improvement. Even if you can't rigorously follow the process of investing regular amounts on a set schedule, it's still okay, as long as you are able to hold over the long term.

Your final returns can be calculated by this equation:

p = δ + α - γ

As a regular investor δ (delta) is outside of your border, and there is nothing you can do to affect it. The process of making careful choices is where you create α (alpha). Your ability to lower γ (gamma) depends on how you manage yourself. Your awareness of borders also influences your alpha and gamma.

Your investments must never leave the market, and you must invest your money, invest your time, and be a friend with time. You should constantly increase your ability to make money outside of the market by gradually upgrading your personal business model. No matter what you do you must learn how to sell. You must cross the wide gap between knowing and doing, becoming your own friend rather than your own worst enemy. You must be clear about borders, and always do your best at your own part. Regular investing is the most graceful performance art, and it can make your every second count.

There is no secret to success. Or, if there are secrets, they are open secrets. Successful people are just those who have used the correct methods that everyone knows to do the correct things that everyone knows.

It's not an exaggeration to say that regular investing can change a person's life.

China enforced the One Child Policy from 1979 to 2015. People of child-rearing age in 1979 are around seventy now, and they are in a special state called "the loneliness of old age". They have been retired for ten or more years, and their only child is currently in the middle of their busiest stage of life, having just had kids. Because times have changed, more and more of them don't live in the same cities as their children, and so many of these parents no longer see their children regularly. They've got nothing to do, and no one to accompany them.

There is an awkward fact:

When they were younger they never imagined that they would live this long.

When they retired a decade or so ago, they hadn't yet realized that many of their generation could easily live to 100. It's only now, as many of their own parents are approaching 100, that they have discovered that "old age" can last so long! Where did these lonely old people mess up? They didn't imagine that they could live so long, so they long ago gave up on their own personal development. Long ago they mistook a new beginning for their own ending.

Back to investing, most people look at compound interest calculations over twenty or thirty years and think that the numbers have nothing to do with their lives. But this generation actually has much more time to invest than they imagine. On average, they have at least 45 years. It's a big mistake to underestimate this!

What does it mean to live to 100? Your great-grandchildren will be grown and able to start investing. The two full cycles we have been talking about are economic cycles, but if your family has four generations of adults when you are 100, that is four full generational cycles. We should think carefully about this fact, and think about how we will deal with it.

Regular investing can not only change a person's life, it can change a family's fate over generations, and it is a process that you will be able to see yourself. It's very important.

Xiaolai Li October 2019, Beijing