"Making money in a super long game, not now. ”Text丨Zhu Likun
Editor丨Qian Yang
Meng Yan is always asked two types of questions that are not very related, one is "where to put your money" and the other is "Why don't your emotions fluctuate?".”
He's a great expressor, or in the words of his fans – "evangelist". In his fan base, there are many golden sentence expressions. For example, "a wide ruler" means that the personal perspective of the world is inevitably biased, and it is necessary to look for more dimensional evaluation criteria. And "welcome to the Netherlands" means that if your life is full of expectations for a trip to Italy and you end up in the Netherlands, you might as well say welcome to yourself and enjoy the unexpected journey.
There are a lot of such words and expressions, first said by Meng Yan, and then fans will repeat these words like a mantra, as if they share a ** dictionary that includes these words.
So much so that someone said to Meng Yan, you are not teaching people to invest but healing others.
In the past eight years, Meng Yan has started his business twice and has been making products that help ordinary people invest in financial management. He opened a course, published a book, and made two investment and financial products.
Fans know and follow Meng Yan Investment, and are first attracted by his personal style - there is a deep calm in him. This calmness surprised even his counselor friends. They asked him about his experiences since childhood, trying to find the roots of a stable personality.
He was born emotionally stable, "he doesn't feel anything when others are breaking down", and his ability to resist pressure is also good, so he falls asleep with a pillow. Meng Yan said that he is not without fluctuations, but he is the kind of person who remembers the lesson.
His calm nature and past lessons have made him gradually form his own investment concept.
In Meng Yan's view, investment and meditation can be discussed together. If he has learned anything about investing, it's meditation. This is reminiscent of Ray Dalio, the author of Principles and the founder of Bridgewater**, who strongly promotes meditation.
In 2018, Meng Yan heard Dalio say at an event, "If I've accomplished anything in my life, I'll attribute all of this to meditation." ”
Dalio isn't talking about some, it's all!”
For the next 5 years, he meditated for at least 5 minutes in the morning and evening every day, and meditated for 40 minutes at a long time, sometimes in a car, and Xi examining the thoughts in his head.
People say I'm calm because I have fewer prejudices. Meng Yan said, "We all have a lot of disciplined concepts and words in our heads, and these are preconceptions, like rust in our minds, and meditation can dissolve them." ”
"Investment is a projection of life".
Meng Yan has also had moments of losing his peace. He believes that he is "born to invest", and his knowledge and technology have also made him confident, but he has ushered in the most failed investment of his life.
It was 2011, and he held a heavy position in a company in Hong Kong stocks, and quickly made tens of millions of dollars with leverage. The European debt crisis came, and his account quickly reached only 1 million. He pressed the "sell" button, went out for a run, and swiped the trading software every two minutes, hoping that the ** would continue to fall. But a month later, the ** rose back to the highest point.
The week after that, he couldn't taste the taste of eating, and understood the literal meaning of "it tastes like chewing wax." In the next six months, this ** became a "heart knot", which appeared on the Internet from time to time, or was mentioned when chatting with friends, which continued to stimulate him. He sometimes calculates how much money he can make if he doesn't sell, or how many houses he can buy with the tens of millions he loses.
In pain, he reflected on the mistake he made in that investment: instead of diversifying the risk, he took a heavy position in one or two ** and added too much leverage.
He learned a lesson worth tens of millions of dollars about how money magnifies people's greed and fear, and makes people unhappy.
He believes that as long as the market still follows these two points, "economic construction as the center" and "the allocation of market resources accounts for a large factor", "when the market is in a downturn, it is good to think about these things clearly, there is nothing to worry about". The problem is not to be short-sighted.
Invest in domestic or overseas marketsBuy**or**?How do ordinary people allocate assets?When asked, Meng Yan will not give a direct answer, after all, everyone's investment goals and risk appetite are different.
Meng Yan wanted to share his benefits and feelings with others, and wanted to improve the investment experience of ordinary people, and he found that he had to start with investing in "education", starting with basic questions such as "Where does the money come from?"."Why does the market have cycles?".Influence individual investors' behavior by changing their perception of ** and **. That's why he named his current product "Knowledgeable and Actionable".
Meng Yan believes that it is because his thinking about investment is "low enough" that he can go through the cycle of ups and downs relatively calmly. He started an "investment live broadcast" in 2017, taking 5 million as the principal and disclosing his investment operations and income once a week. 1 year later, he posted a screenshot of his account: a loss of 730,000 yuan, and an annualized rate of return of -1891%；In the 5th year, the cumulative return will reach 2.16 million, and the cumulative return will be 45% as of March 2023.
In the past 5 years, the "investment live broadcast" has experienced the friction between China and the United States, the new crown epidemic, the global food crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the ...... super inflationEvery macro event makes the investment market uneasy, and Meng Yan's yield line image is a very irregular electrocardiogram, but he keeps his emotions from fluctuating up and down.
Some financial practitioners call *** a "monkey market", where investor sentiment "jumps up and down" with the index. Ordinary investors can't see the direction of ** clearly and fall into a daze. If you are also facing a career crisis and life adversity, the situation is even more difficult.
"Investment is a projection of life".Meng Yan said. His investment philosophy and life philosophy are aligned. When it comes to life and investing, his attitude is the same: accept uncertainty peacefully.
"The mantis arm is a car".
In 2020, Meng Yan founded the investment and financial management app "Know and Do", he started by influencing users' investment cognition, and in the first year of his business, he spent most of his energy in designing an investment introductory course in 4 months, which was put on the app for people to watch for free.
He does not want to take advantage of the "ignorance" of ordinary investors and follow their high bull market sentiment by issuing or recommending large numbers of ** to earn management fees. This way of working has resulted in a lot of people at **high** and only having to sustain a loss in the value of their assets for the next few years.
At a company meeting, he half-jokingly and half-seriously proposed a ten-year OKR: halving China's volatility. This means that participants are more mature and rational and recognize long-term values. This ideal continues from Meng Yan's last venture, which he founded in 2015 as an investment advisory platform.
It's a bit of a mantis arm for a car, but I want to try. He said.
"Knowing and doing" will "dissuade" users through product design. In the details page of a certain version of "Long Money Account" launched by "Know and Walk" and partners, the first screen does not have attractive earnings data, but asks "Why are so many people losing money?".Users are then reminded to "not invest money that may be needed in the short term". They and their partners recently launched overseas investment products, for which they have designed more than 20 questions, including "the proportion of US value in the world" and "how much revenue of S&P 500 listed companies comes from overseas", and users can only buy after mastering the basic knowledge of overseas investment.
A person in charge of a public offering agency once asked him: "Why can you always make innovations in the public offering industry?"Meng Yan replied, "I never thought I was from any particular industry. ”
The funniest thing I've heard in this industry is: it's okay, we (bull market) also make **, but we cut leeks a little lighter than another company. Meng Yan also knows that many companies are under pressure from shareholders to make such choices. In order to avoid falling into this situation himself, he devised a simple shareholding structure for "Know and Do": most of the money was paid by him and his friends, a few members of the founding team, and guaranteed the right to make decisions about the company. There is only one institutional investor among the shareholders, which is not a large proportion.
Because the financial institution has a high capital threshold to apply for qualifications, this ** power structure means that he gets a lot of money. "I'm personally too tied to the company, and I'm taking more risks. "But if you want to play your own game, you have to do it." ”
The design was partly inspired by Warren Buffett – unlike many times in the past. When Meng Yan made that investment that lost tens of millions of yuan, he thought that "Buffett also increased leverage", trying to rationalize his behavior of increasing leverage. When he was doing "and slow", he studied more about how Warren Buffett chooses a good company.
Now, he believes that the biggest reason for Buffett's success is that he "has built a very good long-term structure for himself", which means setting principles and sticking to them, and setting up his environment so that he can act exactly what he wants, which is why Buffett can "tap dance to work".
If the long-term structure is built, it will inevitably encounter short-term twists and turns. There was a period of cash flow constraints, and the team had done private equity and paid membership, but no one was willing to move forward with these projects that did not meet the company's vision, and it was over. Meng Yan finally chose to borrow money from the company himself. He needs to keep the company "at the table" longer.
In 2022, Knowledgeable and Doing partnered with two other qualified institutions to launch the "Long Money Account". This was initially a decision Meng Yan made in a passive situation, but he found that he had become more relaxed and peaceful since then. "Only by going through it can we understand what Buddhism often says, 'the state of mind is transformed'. As soon as you take a step, you see more than if you were stuck in place. He said.
Super long game
In July, Meng Yan once again "live-streamed" investment data, this time showing his "long-money account". For nearly a year and a half before that, his account had an annualized return of 28%。That's not an impressive number.
The "Long Money Account" portfolio strategy is nothing special. It follows the principle of "balance between stocks and bonds", and dynamically adjusts the proportion of assets, bonds and cash assets according to the market. Among the ** assets with the highest returns and risks, the allocation of "long-money accounts" is dominated by broad-based indices to obtain average market returns;Complemented by industry indices and active**, seeking alpha.
What's really great is that they've managed their wealth with content. Chu Songzhu, an observer of public offering and a financial blogger, said, "Their characteristics are not only that the asset side provides a solution with the correct allocation concept, but also that the liability side makes everyone emotionally stable." He believes that the feature of "knowledge and action" is to accompany users for a long time with investment education and other content, guide users to do long-term asset allocation, and minimize irrational suspension and redemption when the market fluctuates - this is the key to "long money" does not become "short money".
Chu Songzhu also observed that investment advisory services are still in the exploratory period in the domestic wealth management field, and the "long-money account" will become one of the accounts with the largest increase in the investment advisory category in 2023.
There are many who say long-termism, and few who persevere. Long-termism demands that people give. "The '** thing about long-term investing is not the fee, but the fear, doubt, anxiety you experience along the way. It's the guilty look you look on when you come home from work and see your family, and it's the self-blame you feel when you wonder if you've messed up your hard-earned money. Meng Yan said in the podcast. He believes that "knowing and doing" is all about helping users "take risks smartly" and allowing users to understand and even "embrace" volatility – as he does, calmly accepting uncertainty and expecting long-term gains.
The various choices made by Meng Yan in entrepreneurship made him a maverick in the financial industry. Looking at the names he gave to several of the company's offices, you might get a better idea of his way of doing things
Empty chairs" * by Amazon founder Bezos. Bezos always has a chair free to represent the consumer when he meets with him;"Pike Place Market" was the birthplace of the first Starbucks, and it was here that Starbucks founder Schultz "poured his heart" into every cup of coffeeBehind the "three pairs of shoes" is the entrepreneurial story of Zappos, the "Amazon of shoes": when a user buys a pair of shoes, Metrobu will send three pairs for the user to pick out the most suitable one and bear the shipping cost of sending back the other two shoes. If a user can't find the right size shoe in a retail store, Metrobu will help the user transfer the product from another **, even if it is their competitor.
The name plates of these offices remind Meng Yan: stand on the side of users.
In 2017, Meng Yan found that a ** was discounted on the official website of the issuing agency, which was cheaper than buying it on the platform he was doing at the time. He guided users to buy on the official website through channels such as announcements in the official *** app of "And Slow", and sent ** notifications to large users.
Many of the users who were persuaded by him to buy discounts** continued to follow the investment strategy launched by Meng Yan's team in the next few years, and became seed users when Meng Yan started this business and took the initiative to help recommend products.
A user who had received a discount** notification later joined Meng Yan's entrepreneurial team. The team member vividly remembers being surprised when he received the notification, which he read over and over again. He has dabbled in a variety of investments such as public and private options, and has stepped on many pitfalls. That unusual behavior made him feel that this man was trustworthy.
Meng Yan envisions a relationship with users that is "knowledgeable and actionable", like venture capital institutions and investment companies, "screening out users who are mutually recognized with us, cultivating them, and growing with them".
He doesn't want to profit at the expense of others, and wants the company's business model to be based on user trust, not poor information. "I'm sure we can make money, in a super long game, not right now. Meng Yan said.
Knowledge and action are one
You only need to be responsible for yourself, you judge the right and make money, and the money is yours". One of the reasons why Meng Yan likes to invest is that it is straightforward enough. And entrepreneurship makes Meng Yan feel that he can achieve greater value: solve other people's problems and change their lives, even a little.
Meng Yan graduated with a major in computer science, and he was excited to knock on ** and make products when he was in school. He realized that he could create something that was not originally available in the world. In 2007, A-shares ushered in the largest bull market in history. He observed that his parents had to check their own net worth 5 times a night and update it to excel. Because the banking software that sold the best in the current era can only be queried the next day, but they are eager to know how much money they made that day.
Based on this demand, Meng Yan started his first business in his life, and together with two colleagues at the time, he made the ** net worth inquiry tool "Caibangzi". The product attracted 1 million users in half a year, but it didn't bring him a sustained sense of accomplishment. 1 year later, with the arrival of the bear market, users are losing rapidly.
He shut down the project and reflected on his creation as only "helping users enjoy the bull market" and not really helping them. It wasn't until many years later that Meng Yan integrated his mature investment philosophy into entrepreneurship that he had the "slow pace" and "knowledge and action".
Meng Yan's favorite entrepreneur is Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who started a company to spread the concept of environmental protection, donated 1% of sales to environmental protection for 20 consecutive years, and in 2022 relinquished ownership of the company to "donate to the earth" a company with a market value of more than $3 billion.
He is simply a model of the unity of knowledge and action. Meng Yan said, "It turns out that people who claim to want to learn from him can't do it at all." Yvonne Chouinard's way of doing the company is what Meng Yan is doing now: living according to his own philosophy, "building a business by the way" in the process, and attracting more people to practice what he believes in.
Meng Yan likes two books, one is "The Biography of the Buddha", and after seeing Shakyamuni's enlightenment, he "can't wait for more people to have his experience", so that people can see why the world is impermanent, what greed, hatred and ignorance are all about, "This can calm people down, or change their perspective". The other is Insight, which looks at Buddhism from a scientific point of view. Robert Wright's original intention in writing this book was because polarization is getting worse and the world is trending towards **. If this book had inspired people to look at things from a broader perspective, perhaps there would have been less conflict between the real and virtual worlds.
Meng Yan also wants to "push the world in the direction he wants" through his work.
Over the years, entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals have repeatedly asked Meng Yan to help manage their personal property, but he always refused. He is still interested in helping ordinary people invest.
He was happy to learn that one of the company's cleaners had put his money into a "long money account". The 55-year-old cleaner, who had been doing business in her hometown for more than 20 years, knew that "money can only be put in the market to generate value", and that her savings could only be stored in the bank made her anxious. On the day she first came to apply, she quietly searched the Internet for what the English slogan at the door meant, "I'm worried that it's an illegal company." Later, she started reading the content of "Know and Do", and when she ran into the company's employees while working, she would ask them questions.
After her first ** long money account" fell for a few days in a row, Meng Yan asked her how she felt. She said: "It's normal to fall, and you can't expect to buy the lowest directly." She divided all her money into several payments according to what she said in "Knowing and Doing", and invested only the part of the "spare money" that she had not used for a long time. Meng Yan would chat with her when she met her in the company and give her some advice.
I help someone do hundreds of millions of asset planning, and I help her take care of tens of thousands of yuan, which gives me the same sense of happiness, or even more of the latter. Meng Yan said.
This article does not constitute investment advice.
Gong ** also contributed to this article.
***hippopx