Three investing schools: Long-term – Medium-term – Short-term

Core idea

In the same market there are three schools — long-term (holding for years), medium-term (catching a D–W-timeframe uptrend wave), short-term (trading Futures wave by wave) — each school demands its own skill set, profit expectations, and psychology. You can pick any school you like, but you must behave according to that school's mindset; the fatal mistake is choosing the long-term path but still staring at the H4 chart every day. For long-term investing, the right question isn't "what should I buy" but "is it TIME for long-term investing yet?".

Details

The base framework: every school must complete 4 aspects

Whether you choose long, medium, or short-term, you must complete all four aspects, in the correct order:

Knowledge → Mindset → Tactics → Psychology.

• The course's first two sessions focus on MINDSET first — only with the right mindset does applying knowledge come out right.
• Only once you have the mindset do you load in knowledge + tactics; combine these three and profit only then begins.
• Psychology is both the hardest aspect and one that feeds back: when the other three produce profit → confidence grows → confidence in turn reinforces the other three into a sustainable loop. (Same self-diagnosis framework in 20 investing rules + the 3 stages of improving your trading.)

Context: the difficulty ladder of the markets

The teacher ranks difficulty in ascending order, each rung requiring roughly 3–5 times the knowledge of the rung below:

An important paradox: the easier a market is to enter (high liquidity, just a few hundred thousand VND, click one order and you're in), the biggest barrier becomes yourself. Financial markets are a zero-sum game — to win you must join the minority who have knowledge–mindset–strategy. (Details on "applying the real-estate mindset to every single trade" in Trading rules — the foundation beneath every technique.)

1. LONG-TERM investing — buy during accumulation/flush, hold for years

• Advantage: costs little time (measured in years), large profit (expect tens of times over a cycle). Everyone should have a long-term allocation.
• The WRONG question: "what should I buy this round to hold?" → The RIGHT question: "Is it time for long-term investing yet?" and "Has the flush (down) / accumulation phase ended?".
• The timing principle — the train metaphor: only buy long-term once the train (price) has decelerated, braked to a stop, and accumulated thoroughly, then starts gradually accelerating upward. Jumping in while the train is still hurtling down fast = catching a falling knife. (Same train mechanism in Trading rules — the foundation beneath every technique.)
• Reading the cycle: watch the W timeframe and above (2W, 3W, monthly); understand the 3 market phases under Dow theory (accumulation → growth → distribution) and how the sharks accumulate — see 20 investing rules + the 3 stages of improving your trading and News & the market (narrative, good/bad news, capital flow).
• Skills needed: fundamental analysis + money-flow analysis (to know whether to buy) combined with technical analysis (to know whether the TIMING is right, to avoid closing early/buying too soon) + DCA discipline + capital allocation.

2. MEDIUM-TERM investing — catching a D–W-timeframe uptrend wave

• Nature: buy in to ride a medium-term uptrend wave (observed from the D up to W timeframe), sell when the momentum runs out. Expect a few times over (not tens of times like long-term) — for example a BTC medium-term wave rising roughly 2x, altcoins a few tens of percent up to a few times.
• Skills needed:
  1. Technical analysis (recognizing whether the medium-term wave has started).
  2. Money-flow analysis — watching whether money is flowing in; a medium-term wave at ≥ D timeframe typically shows clear inflow early on, with BTC usually rising first.
  3. Knowing the traits of a medium-term wave to confirm whether you're in the wave yet.
  4. DCA with the trend + capital management: while buying pressure remains, hold/add; once it runs out or a weakening signal appears, exit.

3. SHORT-TERM investing — trading Futures wave by wave

• Nature: surfing waves, buying and selling by the wave on a small timeframe. Risk per trade ≤ 1% of the account (see Trading rules — the foundation beneath every technique).
• 4 factors that must be complete: trading system · trading mindset · trading tactics · trading psychology (the hardest) — because greed–anger–delusion–pride–doubt are innate.
• All three schools require knowing technical analysis (TA); even someone who only holds long-term must learn TA to time their entry, or they'll buy in the wrong zone.

Putting it into practice

1. Identify which school you're playing for each pool of capital — then lock in the right observation timeframe and the right psychology for it. Don't mix them up.
2. Before asking "what should I buy," ask first: what phase of the cycle is the market in? — if the W/monthly timeframe is still flushing and hasn't finished braking → it's not yet time for long-term investing; only medium/short-term makes sense.
3. To make money in a downtrend & a hibernation phase you must know how to play short-term — because long-term only catches one wave every 3–5 years, medium-term gets 1–2 waves a year (see "the three types of trader" in Trading rules — the foundation beneath every technique).

What the teacher stresses / common traps

• A classic mistake: picking one school but behaving like another. "You're a long-term investor but keep opening the H4 chart every day; a drop of 1 billion [VND] and your stomach is in knots, one night down and you can't eat or sleep" → the mindset is right but the psychology is on the wrong timeframe → you sabotage yourself.
• Don't carry the rose-tinted view that "everyone wins." "When the water rises, the duckweed rises with it" — during an uptrend, anyone who buys profits; only when the water recedes do you learn who still has money left. A figure the teacher cites: roughly 99 out of 100 people who bought right at the previous cycle's bottom couldn't hold on, because they kept expecting a higher top.
• However you made your profit is how you'll lose it. If early gains come from luck rather than mastery of knowledge, the market will take it all back — like a gambler who wins one round and inevitably comes back to burn it all again.
• (A few specific price figures the teacher cited for the 2022 context are unclear — omitted since they have no lasting value; only the principle is kept.)

Related lessons

• Trading rules — the foundation beneath every technique — "the three types of trader" (day/swing/position), low entry barrier, the 1% rule
• 20 investing rules + the 3 stages of improving your trading — accumulation/growth/distribution cycle, the Knowledge→Mindset→Tactics→Psychology framework
• News & the market (narrative, good/bad news, capital flow) — sharks accumulating at the bottom, releasing news according to the wave's position
• Don't predict the market — "to make money, you don't need to know what happens next" — the goal is profit, not forecasting