0-0. [Prologue] Why I Lost Everything Staring at Charts All Night

Introduction: I Thought I Was Different (Confessions of a Chart Slave)

“I thought I was different.” I had no idea that this single arrogant sentence would become the prelude to my brutal investment journal.

From Jesse Livermore’s How to Trade in Stocks, André Kostolany’s The Art of Thinking About Money, Chaos in Chaos, to The Lizard’s Brain addressing human physiological limits—if a book contained the word ‘stock’, I devoured it regardless of genre. I must have read at least 100 books that way.

It wasn’t just books. The 5 stages of Hyman Minsky’s bubble model, the Sakada 3 Methods, Elliott Wave Theory, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo, RSI, MACD, Envelopes, and all kinds of complex chart patterns—I studied them day and night to understand them in their original forms. I printed out candlestick meanings and posted them everywhere my eyes could reach, memorizing them by heart. I strictly avoided paid stock-alert groups while endlessly searching stock YouTube channels. Trading techniques, chart analysis, insights shared from news and books… I crammed knowledge into my head indiscriminately just to be different from the crowd.

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1. The Arrogance of Thinking I Knew More Than Wall Street Brokers

ROE, PER, PBR—fundamental analysis metrics were second nature. I listened to major global news daily and cut back on sleep at dawn to summarize US market news. During trading hours, I searched for breaking news every hour, waiting like a hunter for a major market theme that matched my predefined scenarios. There were moments I arrogantly assumed I knew far more and was much sharper than typical Wall Street brokers.

My investment portfolio was multi-layered. Part of my capital went to long-term investments, part to semi-annual holds, part to 2-week to 1-month swing trades, and the rest to scalping for split-second moves. Every day, I recorded ticker symbols, catalyst issues, chart patterns, and profit/loss statuses. Just as four seasons exist, I desperately tried to read the grand flow of capital by connecting macroeconomic industry cycles, political term cycles, and government policy directions in my head.

I was convinced I would never fail. To tell you the conclusion first, I ended up blowing up my account—wiping out completely—three times in the rough sea of capitalism. I knew the heroic success narratives all too well: that everyone blows up an account, that through the agony of bankruptcy one discovers enlightenment, and eventually a modest recovery compound effect kicks in to build exponential wealth. I rationalized to myself that I just had to quietly endure that painful process.

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2. A Slow, Agonizing Death: Bleeding Out over Time

The beginning was eerily smooth. I made consistent daily profits through short-term day trading. As beautiful numbers—an average weekly win rate of 80% and a 15% profit-loss ratio—were engraved in my trading journal, I unconsciously succumbed to the arrogance that I could predict future prices. In my mind, I was already constructing grand fantasies of massive wealth. Drunk on that dopamine rush, capital allocated to swing trades or long-term holdings was gradually transferred into my day-trading account, bit by bit.

That was how I blew up my first account. But I brushed it off with a foolish laugh:
“It’s only a few thousand dollars anyway. Consider it cheap tuition paid to become a great investor. I know the structure and I’ve systemized it, so this amount is nothing.”

I had already read Chairman Seung-ho Kim’s The Properties of Money and knew the gravity of money, yet such arrogant words spilled out of my mouth. Deep down in my heart, an uneasy sense of dissonance flared up, but the words coming out of my mouth were entirely different.

The second bankruptcy took two full years. That was because I made a firm resolve never to alter asset allocation ratios again. However, attempting to endure purely through willpower without a philosophical system was ultimately nothing more than an agonizing ‘slow death’—bleeding out, hit by hit, very slowly. Comforting myself with the fact that I hadn’t shifted day-trading capital into long-term accounts, I considered it growth and another tuition fee, promising myself: ‘Next time, I will never day-trade. I’ll stick strictly to medium-to-long term investments and swing trades.’

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3. The Moment Reason Snapped: A Heart Without Even a Technical Bounce

Before six months had even passed, a swing trade hit a bear market, got trapped, and degraded into a quarterly investment. The strict stop-loss discipline that executed without mercy during ultra-short-term scalping completely failed when the investment horizon lengthened, blinded by the pain of loss. In the end, system collapse was inevitable the moment I relied on fantasies built upon my flawed predictions of the future.

I don’t even remember when I tore up the photo of the luxury sports car taped in front of my desk, and the Mandalart goal chart I had strictly maintained became utterly useless.

At a certain moment, the rational circuit of my brain completely burned out. Facing candles violently fluctuating up and down, I literally threw all the money earmarked for quarterly investments right onto the buy/sell execution buttons in a manic frenzy.

“I will never trade stocks again…”

In my shattered account and soul, there was only cold silence—without even a technical bounce.

Even now, as I write these words and recall those tracks of pain, I feel my brain heat up and freeze. Facing the wild brutality of capitalism, noble philosophical lectures like Sayno’s Teaching could not control my raging greed and fear. Perhaps only the harsh, bone-carving club of remorse was the sole cure capable of taming that wild instinct.

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Conclusion: A Serene Brain Ultimately Creates the Winner in Capitalism

No matter how massive your knowledge grows, without a mechanical system to control the vulnerability of the human brain ruled by raw instincts, the stock market remains an unfair game you can never win. The reason we blow up our accounts is not a lack of trading techniques, but because we fail to control our amygdala—which evolved to be biologically vulnerable to volatility.

There is a profound difference between staring at charts daily, addicted to dopamine while tossed around by market volatility, and protecting your brain’s complete serenity through systematic S&P 500 dollar-cost averaging while trusting the heavy weight of ‘time’. The latter is not passive abandonment of capital; it is the most active and noble practice of ‘non-possession’ that allows capital to compound exponentially within the peace of daily life.

Is your trading currently granting your brain a state of serene equilibrium, or is it inflicting relentless stress of greed and fear? Defining your investment method is ultimately defining your life and philosophy.