I. Gaokao (College Entrance Exam): There are absolute, objective scores, and people dare not deceive themselves.

1. A certain score equals a certain rank, with no room for ambiguity.

2. If you score 500 points, you can absolutely not claim to be top-tier.

3. Mock exams, rankings, and admission cut-off lines repeatedly prove you wrong.

4. You clearly know:

- I work hard

- My talent is average

- This is my level

→ People have an extremely sober assessment of their own abilities.

II. Stock Trading: There is no immediate, objective, honest feedback.

People are best at self-deception, and the stock market provides the perfect breeding ground for it:

1. Profit = I'm skilled; Loss = The market is rigged / Bad luck.

The brain automatically filters memories, keeping only the successes and deleting the failures.

2. There is no unified "ranking."

No one tells you:

Your -20% annualized returns already put you in the bottom 10% of the market.

You just think: I'm just temporarily underperforming.

3. Short-term luck = Long-term ability.

Get lucky and double your money once,

and you immediately think you're a stock god,

completely ignoring that it was probability.

4. There is no "standard answer."

The Gaokao has right and wrong answers; the stock market doesn't.

Anyone can make up a theory to convince themselves.

→ In the stock market, people can forever refuse to admit they're not good enough.

III. The Core Difference:

Gaokao: Effort and results are strongly correlated; the path is clear.

How much you study, how much you know, what score you get.

Clear cause and effect; you can't fool yourself.

Stock Market: Short-term effort and results are unrelated.

- Staring at the screen intensely → Lose more money

- Researching frantically → Step on a landmine

- The smarter you are → The more confident → The harder you lose

Short-term is luck; long-term is ability.

But the vast majority of people only look at the short term.

IV. Elevated to the Ultimate Truth:

The Gaokao uses scores to tell you: Who you are.

The stock market uses illusion to make you think: Who you are.

- Gaokao: Objective → Humility

- Stock Market: Subjective → Arrogance