Duan Yongping's 93 "Tao" Principles: Do the right things and take the long-term path.

Source of content ｜ This article is excerpted from books published by CITIC Press Group

What is the Tao: Duan Yongping's Q&A Collection

Edited by Munger Academy

(The following is the main text)

At the beginning of this year, when Duan Yongping talked about AI on Xueqiu, he left a thought-provoking sentence: "The historical wheel of AI is rolling forward, and it will crush all the bubbles of AI."

This is not only his calm judgment on the technological wave, but also the epitome of his consistent thinking of "focusing on the essence and looking at the long term". From Bubugao to OPPO and vivo, from NetEase to Moutai and Apple, Duan Yongping has verified the same set of ideas with decades of "dual success" in industry and investment: rationality, keeping one's feet on the ground, and doing the right thing.

Even when facing new species like Pop Mart, whose core is "emotional value", he did not simply deny it just because he "couldn't understand it". Instead, he kept observing and thinking rationally, and finally gave his judgment under the framework of "Right business, right people".

The book What is the Tao faithfully collects his public Q&A from 2025 to 2026. This article extracts 93 golden sentences from this book, presenting his rare sobriety in investment, business and life choices in an original way.

I. About AI: I can learn it, why can't you?

1. The historical wheel of AI is rolling forward, and it will crush all the bubbles of AI.

2. It is an undeniable fact that AI is changing the world, right?! That's a fact!

3. AI obviously helps you collect information faster, and what you collect depends on yourself.

4. I know many people are distilling my past words, but does it really help a lot? I don't mind, but if you lose money, you can blame it on the lobster. So I think everyone may have to take this matter very seriously, don't say you can't learn it, in fact you can learn it. I can learn it, why can't you? I think AI will affect everyone, whether adult or child. I have seen many people who feel that they can no longer accept new things after they are over 40 years old. In fact, I think their life will be very painful and uncomfortable. Sometimes new things are quite fun.

II. About life: Being honest and grounded is not a magic mirror to see through others, it is used to examine yourself

5. The power of compound interest is very strong, don't care too much about the small immediate benefits.

6. Tao means "do the right thing and do the thing right", which means to think rationally for the long term and focus on the essence.

7. Being honest and grounded is not a magic mirror to see through others, it is used to examine yourself.

8. The real reason for handling a heavy matter effortlessly is that you treat every small matter as easy to handle. Treating small matters easily means looking like you don't need to exert any effort, but that is the result of going all out, which is full of real efforts. Only by going all out can you look effortless. But you need to think first whether you are doing the right thing.

9. Without ideals, you can't go far, and without realism, it's hard to survive, so you need a combination of idealism and realism. I think almost all good enterprises are a combination of idealism and realism, which roughly means thinking very long-term, and being down-to-earth to do every little thing well.

10. The world has opportunities for anyone, but it does not mean that you must have opportunities.

11. Yes, it's the same everywhere, academic qualifications are very important at the beginning. If your educational background is not good enough, "Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn't make you who you are. It is the rest of your story, who you choose to be." This passage from Kung Fu Panda is really amazing.

12. If you have no sense of right and wrong in your mind and don't understand probability, you will indeed work very hard. No matter what you do, you will eventually become the person you are supposed to be. Complaining about the environment won't get you anything!

13. Everyone will eventually become the person they are supposed to be, which of course includes "the vast majority of people".

14. What I mean is, what you are good at is what you know, otherwise what are you doing?

15. It is much easier to know what will happen than to know when it will happen.

16. Our Stop Doing List has saved us. In fact, principles often show their "heroic true colors" in crises. Such moments are rare, but they are likely to determine life and death.

17. Thinking long-term about everything will improve your survival rate.

18. But life is very long, there are many games of chess to play, learning to think long-term will make you make fewer mistakes in the future.

19. It is difficult for fish to understand the joy of walking.

20. Go get a job! Humans are social people, it is not enough to only deal with fish.

21. In fact, every era is difficult, every era has opportunities, and the probability of success in every era is very small.

22. Each of us is independent, I am just an ordinary person, I don't think I have made any "contribution", I just like what I do.

23. I belong to the kind of person "with no great ambitions", I will try my best to lay every brick well, but also want to figure out what on earth we are building.

24. I am never obsessed with immortality, although I hope to live a healthy life. I think it's amazing to be able to do what you like to do clearly at the age of 100, but I can face the real world rationally.

25. In the process of doing the right thing, you will make many mistakes, and this process is called learning.

26. "Heavy" is for the people watching, "light" is for the person lifting.

27. It may be the result of developing a thinking habit. I do find that many people don't think much, and the reason is unknown. Thinking is the most important.

28. Life is a game...

29. Work not only brings you income, but also is a place where you contact the society. Humans are social people (Marx's words), it's better to have some contact with the society.

30. ("Rightness") is the sense of right and wrong! It is the bottom line!

31. If you have no sense of right and wrong in your mind and don't understand probability, you will indeed work very hard. No matter what you do, you will eventually become the person you are supposed to be. Complaining about the environment won't get you anything!

32. I think education is certainly very useful. People with good education are completely different from people without education at all, you can even tell from their eyes and faces.

33. I think doing exercises is really helpful, but not everyone can realize it. Many people do exercises rigidly without thinking. I think you need to find the method from it, find the reason from the mistakes you made, so that you can learn the whole logic.

III. About business: Return to cash flow, understand the only buyer of the company

34. If you always keep thinking about beating the market in your mind, it is very difficult to beat the market. This sentence means: There is actually only one buyer of the company, and investment only needs to focus on the business itself.

35. The most important thing for a business model is to look at the future cash flow.

36. People often say that "value investment" is very difficult, so they often choose a more difficult way.

37. What's wrong with you that you would invest in a company that makes you anxious?

38. I share my ideas just for fun. The truth of investment is very simple, every company has only one buyer, and in the end it has nothing to do with what others say. People who can't understand this sentence are not on the same path as me.

39. In fact, it is because there is only one buyer of the company, that is the company itself. What others say doesn't matter.

40. In fact, the sentence "there is only one buyer of the company, that is the company itself" is very easy to understand. As long as you go back to the origin of investment, assume that what you buy is not a listed company, and it will not be listed in 10 or 20 years, you can easily eliminate the influence of the market and see the real value of the company.

41. In the long run, no one can affect the stock price except the company itself.

42. There is no such thing as malicious short selling or malicious long buying in the world! If any company gets into trouble because it is shorted by others, it already has trouble in itself. Please remember that the real buyer of each company is only one, that is the company itself, which is the final cash flow or the future cash flow of the company. I know many people can't understand this, because in fact, the people who buy the company on the surface are not exactly the company itself. But think about 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years... Why do people buy this company? Isn't it just because the company can make money? If no one buys it, a very profitable company has no value, what will the company's final money be used for?

43. The "common sense" in investment is that "there is actually only one buyer of the company, that is the company itself". It can also be said that "buying stocks is buying companies, which is buying the discounted future cash flow of the company".

44. When a good company is cheap, it is a good time to increase positions.

45. But it is not easy to figure out which company is a good company and whether it is cheap.

46. People who can't understand the situation of 10 years are even more unable to understand the situation of one year or one month, so they have to gamble. This is the reason why most retail investors lose money regardless of bull market or bear market. Most people who win short-term bets will continue to bet, and in the end they will most likely lose in cognition.

47. I always think that the "discount rate" given by everyone should be their own (long-term) maximum opportunity cost. For many people who don't understand investment, the most appropriate opportunity cost should be the risk-free rate of return.

48. The value of the enterprise itself has no direct relationship with everyone's opportunity cost, but deciding whether to invest in a certain company is directly related to one's own opportunity cost. In theory, everyone should invest in the investment that brings the highest return to themselves (in the long run), but in fact many people don't know what they are doing at all.

49. Many people may have a misunderstanding of "understanding", thinking that you hold a crystal ball and see everything in the future. In fact, investment is a game full of variables, and all reasonable behaviors are based on probability.

50. Anyone had better not short sell.

51. What I mean is: "If you understand investment, you don't need to add leverage, because you will make money sooner or later; if you don't understand investment, you should not add leverage even more, because leverage will make you bankrupt sooner or later." Here leverage refers to margin, that is, loans using your own stocks as collateral at a securities firm. I often see people who are young and don't understand investment, so they want to learn easier ways to lose money quickly, this logic is very interesting.

52. Interestingly, most people are the type who "create difficulties and have to go ahead even if there are no difficulties". This is what Buffett said: very few people are willing to get rich slowly... They would rather choose to lose money quickly.

53. The questions asked are all about speculation, people who invest will invest silently by themselves.

54. Many people say that value investment is very difficult. Speculation is even more difficult! Many people don't understand this problem. 80 to 90 percent of retail investors lose money in speculation, whether in bull market or bear market. Then he says I'm very difficult, why am I difficult? I just bought a Moutai stock and held it for more than ten years, where is the difficulty for me?

55. Investors need to be "objective", "optimism" may kill people.

56. Let me give you an example and you will understand: I didn't understand NVIDIA 10 years ago, if you understood it, you could make a lot of money. Similarly, I understood Apple more than ten years ago, and I understood NetEase more than 20 years ago, you still couldn't make a lot of money.

57. Don't think about market value, focus on the business!

58. I can't understand things with no cash flow. I'm not interested in things with no cash flow, you don't get the point!!!

59. If you can make money in short-term trading, of course you can do short-term trading! The shortest short-term trading is in Macau.

60. If you have spare money and don't invest, you will definitely lose to inflation in the end, but gambling will make you lose money faster and more completely.

61. Yes, gamblers do get anxious, so they need to learn psychology and find ways to comfort themselves. If you buy companies that you understand and will make a lot of money in the future, you don't need to understand psychology, it's enough for you to understand the company.

62. In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.

63. You'd better not touch the "investment" that you don't plan to hold for ten years, don't think about the market or the trend. The result of planning to hold for ten years doesn't necessarily mean you have to hold it for ten years, but the mentality of not planning to hold for ten years will make you easily make a speculative decision.

64. I am a full position advocate. By the way, let me explain what full position advocate means. Full position advocate means that you understand in your bones that spare money deposited in the bank will definitely lose to inflation, so you need to learn to invest and find good companies to hold.

65. Being right has nothing to do with being difficult, the logic of "difficult" but "right" doesn't make sense. Will you not do the "easy and right thing" just because it is difficult?

66. People without faith need to find a "religion" to comfort themselves, but value investment is not a "religion" or a "faith". Value investment requires very rationality, and rational people will think independently. If you are not pretending to seek advice, you should learn to think rationally first.

67. I don't worry about those people who follow my attention and do random research, if they don't lose money in these places, they will lose money in other places.

68. Because I don't have time to trade when playing ball, I made a lot of extra money. I sometimes joke that I might be the person who makes the most money playing golf in the world.

69. There is no difference between domestic retail investors and foreign retail investors, 85% of people will lose money in the end. The key is, why do you want to be one of the 85%?

70. You'd better run an enterprise first, which is very helpful for you to understand business.

71. "Not easy" means that it is not easy to understand the business, "simple" means that only understanding the business is important. What others think has nothing to do with you? When the stock price falls and you are full of fear, it means that you have bought a company you don't understand.

72. "Good business" is good business, it is determined by the business itself, and has nothing to do with perspective. But for people who don't understand business, I don't know what their perspective is.

73. Every company has risks. Whether company executives buy their own stocks has little to do with whether their company is good or not. Simply put, the companies you can't understand are all very risky.

74. Investment doesn't require high education, and it doesn't require high EQ. Investment is actually very similar to farming.

IV. About investment: There is only one buyer of the company, that is the company itself

75. In fact, the sentence "there is only one buyer of the company, that is the company itself" is very easy to understand. As long as you go back