No longer "relying on luck"! How to make money during market adjustments?

Ask AI · How to Profit from Structural Opportunities During Market Corrections?

Today’s Market

On March 26, all three major A-share indices closed lower, with the Shanghai Composite Index falling below 3,900 points, and the Shenzhen Composite Index and ChiNext Index both dropping over 1%, while the Sci-Tech 50 Index fell by more than 2%. Nearly 4,500 stocks in the entire market were in the red, with trading volume shrinking to 1.96 trillion yuan, indicating a significant cooling of sentiment. Hong Kong stocks faced similar pressure, with the Hang Seng Tech Index plummeting more than 3%. On the market, defensive characteristics were evident, with a few sectors such as coal, oil and petrochemicals, and banking closing in the green against the trend; meanwhile, sectors like computers and non-bank finance led the decline. Local hotspots concentrated on the battery and oil and gas supply chains, mainly driven by overseas supply disruptions and geopolitical catalysts.

Only Know How to Go Long? Then Your Understanding of the Market May Be Lacking

There exists a deeply rooted belief in the market that the sufficient and necessary condition for making money is that the market is in an upward trend. This linear thinking that simply ties profits and losses to market direction forms the underlying logic of most people’s investment behavior. However, this is precisely the deepest misunderstanding of the nature of the market.

The market itself has no moral inclination; it is merely a neutral, dynamic system that reflects the expectations and emotions of all participants. Relying entirely on the market’s one-way movement for hopes of profit is akin to surrendering the safety of navigation to the capriciousness of the weather, relinquishing the initiative in steering.

From the essence of investing, profit arises from the price difference between “buying low” and “selling high,” but this does not mean that one must rely on the overall rise of indices. The market is composed of hundreds of thousands of independent entities, and its internal structure is always in a state of differentiation and rotation.

Even if the index oscillates or declines in the long term, structural opportunities still exist: companies with unique competitive advantages can withstand cycles, independent changes in industry prosperity can generate local market trends, and the overall valuation contraction of the market may actually provide a soil for true value discovery. The belief that one can only make money if the overall market rises essentially obscures the clarity at the micro level with macro vagueness, neglecting the importance of selecting individual stocks and grasping structure.

Analyzing this from a cognitive perspective, this idea reveals a mindset of “passive dependence”—investors place themselves below the market, willingly becoming passive responders. From this viewpoint, the market is a powerful, uncontrollable “other,” and one can only pray for favorable conditions.

True professional investors, however, have a mindset of “active control.” They understand that each state of the market environment corresponds to different response strategies. They do not judge the market as good or bad, but assess whether the current stage is suitable for offense, defense, or patiently waiting. When market valuations are excessively high, controlling positions and focusing on defensive assets is a strategy; when the market is turbulent, buying quality assets that have been mispriced at reasonable prices is also a strategy. The core of the strategy is to find relatively favorable risk-reward solutions in any environment.

Furthermore, completely relying on market rises for profit hopes fundamentally distorts risk management in investing. When the market declines, such investors often fall into panic or rigidity because they believe the “money-making environment” has disappeared, neglecting that the release of risk itself is creating space for future opportunities and ignoring that during oscillations and adjustments, one can still accumulate profits through adjusting portfolio structures, focusing on high dividend assets, and gradually positioning quality targets.

The correct strategic perspective should establish a methodology that does not depend on a specific market direction and possesses logical coherence. It may be based on deep value, may track prosperity, may focus on position management, or may involve asset allocation, but the core is that this method can provide clear action guidelines at different stages of the market, rather than merely betting on a single directional rise.

The market is complex, and strategies should also be multidimensional. Abandoning the obsession with the market’s necessity to rise and instead building one’s own methodological system is the essential path from “relying on fate” to “active management.”

Investment Message

True investment grows in tandem with excellent companies. Ignore the emotional noise of the market and focus on the accumulation of intrinsic value in companies. Time will reward those long-termists who base their actions on deep research and maintain patience and discipline.