Advice for Stock Market Beginners: Do Not Forget Your Purpose for Investing

I am a novice. To give you an idea, even in a market this good, I made a tiny bit of profit but then missed the timing, so my account is currently in the red.
Still, I've been doing this for 20 years, so I've met all sorts of investors and seen all kinds of things.
Fortunately, thanks to good luck, I am still in the green.
My initial investment of a few million won has grown larger than the average retail investor (though a significant portion was saved up through installments, lol).
On average, I've earned more than the interest rate of a savings account every year.
That's about it. The experts here might laugh at me, but
based on the bits and pieces of wisdom and experience I've gathered,
I'd like to offer a little advice to those starting out:
You must not forget your purpose for trading stocks.
The purpose of trading stocks is actually quite obvious.
You want to make some money...
To put it more elegantly, you want to achieve economic stability.
You must not forget this purpose.
Wait, who would forget that?
Aren't you clicking buy and sell dozens of times a day, every second, for that very purpose?
No. Surprisingly, many people forget it.
Stock trading—if it were incredibly boring, people wouldn't ruin their lives or end up at the Han River because of it.
Perhaps even fewer people would lose money.
Think about your professional life.
Work is often not fun, right?
It's often boring, right?
You might feel like quitting several times a day, but you endure it, right?
Why? Because money comes out of it.
But stocks are not like that. It is incredibly fun.
Sometimes, it's even more exciting than games or gambling.
And while doing so, people forget the purpose of their trades.
Instead of making money, they get deeply immersed because it's fun.
Most people don't even realize they've become obsessed. With bloodshot eyes, they stare at the trading screen all day, actually becoming slaves to adrenaline, while deluding themselves into thinking they are working hard to make money.
Then, they move to the next stage... losses. In extreme cases, the Han River.
Let me tell you a slightly different story.
There is a famous person named Ed Seykota, known as the founder of systematic trading.
He left behind a terrifying quote:
'Every market participant gets what they want.'
Some of you might think, "Huh? If everyone gets what they want, shouldn't everyone be making money? Does that even make sense? Isn't that nonsense?"
Let me explain what he meant.
Some people spend all day talking about how much of an investment expert they are, even when no one at the office is listening.
In my current company, there is someone who, whenever they meet people, brags about their grand vision and how they invested in SpaceX, and even encourages others to invest.
To be honest, I didn't know much about SpaceX, so I searched for it today.
Sure enough, it's on a downward trend compared to its listing price...
In my view, that colleague's purpose isn't making money, but rather bragging and seeking validation through stock trading. The experts I know don't talk like that colleague. They usually don't even talk about stocks, and if the topic comes up, they are humble rather than boastful, and they generally prefer listening to others' knowledge... When you think about it, this attitude is only natural. The purpose of stock investing is ultimately to collect information, make investment decisions, and make money; therefore, experts are simply being faithful to that purpose.
Actually, Ed Seykota's words have an even more terrifying meaning.
He was warning against human irrationality and self-destructive tendencies—that some people are fulfilling a desire for self-destruction, while others want to show their surroundings their own bankruptcy to torment them, and so on.
If you don't forget that your purpose is to make money and you stick to it, stock investing becomes not just a long-term race, but something you view from a certain distance.
Since you can make money through a job, by running a business, or through other investments like real estate, you view stock investing as just one of many options, allowing you to remain objective.
This applies even when narrowing the scope to financial investments.
There are stocks, but there are also bonds, promissory notes, ELBs, and even liquid savings accounts.
Since the goal is to make money, if you suspect a bear market, you can withdraw your investment and park it in cash-like instruments such as promissory notes or RPs, and then reallocate it back to investments when you think a bull market is coming or when you see a truly good stock. This allows for flexible fund management.
And what many stock market experts teach is that fund management is just as important as picking the right stock—perhaps even more so. But if you forget your purpose and get obsessed with the act of trading itself, that becomes impossible.
This post has become quite long. Anyway, please do not forget: because stock trading is so much fun, it is easy to forget your purpose.
If you throw all your investment capital into a bear market...