📖Duan Yongping

Market as Your Servant

🌱 Beginner★★★★★

Use the market as your servant, not your guide.

💬

The market exists to serve you, not to guide you. Use market prices to your advantage — buy when the market offers bargains and sell when it offers premiums.

— Duan Yongping Interview,2021

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Valuation is like buying a house: the asking price reflects mood, but true value comes from structure, location, and long-term utility. Good assets still need sensible prices.

📖 Core Interpretation

In Market as Your Servant, Duan Yongping focuses on the gap between price and value. Returns come from paying less than what a business is worth, not from guessing short-term market moves.
💎 Key Insight:The market offers prices; you decide whether they're fair.

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❓ Why It Matters

Ignoring valuation turns even good companies into poor investments. Overpaying compresses future returns and leaves little margin when assumptions are wrong.

🎯 How to Practice

Estimate intrinsic value with conservative assumptions, set clear buy ranges, and act only when price offers a meaningful discount with acceptable downside.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Confusing a low price with true cheapness
Using one metric without business context
Overly optimistic assumptions that erase margin of safety

📚 Case Studies

1
Avoiding Overpriced Chinese Equities (2008)
During the pre-crisis boom, many Chinese stocks traded at extreme valuations. Duan emphasized only buying when prices were well below conservative intrinsic value estimates.
✨ Outcome:Avoided severe drawdowns in 2008 crash and preserved capital for later opportunities.
2
NetEase Concentrated Bet (2006)
Duan Yongping made a focused investment in NetEase after deep research, allocating a large portion of capital despite volatility concerns.
✨ Outcome:The position appreciated significantly over subsequent years, reinforcing his philosophy of concentrating in understandable, high‑conviction businesses.

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