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The story
An investing thread went up on 5ch’s “Whatever’s Live G” board. It kicked off when the OP complained that world-stock index funds like eMAXIS Slim All Country (“Orukan”) had spent the past several months just bouncing up and down without any real gains, griping that it was “mind-numbingly boring.” Replies poured in: some said it still beat a savings account or Japanese government bonds, others pointed to people who’d lost big on individual stocks or Chinese-equity funds and argued “boring is better.” Meanwhile the OP kept admitting they couldn’t stop checking the daily price swings. The debate also touched on past downturns that eventually recovered after dozens of months, as well as worries about Japan’s shrinking population down the line — leaving the thread split over how to read a short-term stall.
What people said
This is mind-numbingly boring.
Nah, it's still better than a savings account.
That's how low savings interest rates are.
Come on, that's a stretch.
Though if you could be certain something's going to rise, FX trading would beat investing anyway.
Doesn't matter to me — I live in Japan and get hit by yen swings either way…
Got wrecked recently when the yen strengthened and my assets' value tanked.
Apparently government bonds beat a term deposit by a long shot.
I want to recommend them to my parents too.
If you're not a full-time investor, just being able to leave it alone is already a benefit.
For every winner you see bragging on social media, there are twice as many who got wiped out.
They say good investing is boring investing, but…
Seeing it genuinely not go up for months straight, the boredom actually hurts.
I guess I should be glad it's not down 10% or something.
Still, if I'm doing it anyway, I'd rather it be fun.
It'd be fun if it just kept climbing steadily upward.
There is one.
A savings account (lol).
The balance only ever goes up.
What it's actually worth is another story.
If you're looking at it as gambling, sure, it's boring.
I'm bad at gambling anyway.
I started investing because I heard it's positive-sum, unlike gambling.
But it's grown so little I genuinely can't feel any progress, and it's starting to wear on me.
I think so too.
Though since the principal isn't guaranteed, it's rough when it dips below what you put in.
Even on the monthly chart it's been nothing but losses lately, no gains at all…
I dumped a big lump sum in back in July and it's still in the red. Painful.
If you can profit without lifting a finger, that's the best outcome there is.
Fine if it's actually profitable, but…
It's been flat or slightly down for months now and it's making me anxious.
Is my understanding right that an MRF is basically a brokerage-account version of a savings deposit?
If so, an index fund still looks like it'd have better returns.
Turned 3,000 yen into 70,000 — grows way faster than investing.
Don't you need good dynamic vision to win at slots?
No way, no way, no way — I'm slow as a snail.
Put your money in and go unconscious — that's the correct move.
Forget monthly, I end up checking it every single day.
Though right now I'm avoiding logging in because of the whole PHP thing.
I've played it safe and only buy Orukan.
People often call it a "worse version of the S&P," but it's diversified, so this should be fine, right?
Might be worth dipping a toe into individual stocks.
Wonder if there's anything interesting out there.
That said, I've got zero desire to invest in damn Japan either, so right now it's all sitting in savings.
Nice.
If you've got enough saved up, couldn't you just live off savings and government bonds alone?
It's totally possible there's a huge crash right when you all turn 60, and stocks don't recover for 30 years.
By the time I'm 60 it'll have grown 20x, so even if it gets cut in half, I'll be totally fine.
Investing means betting where the expected value is high.
If it's a bet where there's a 70% chance you get 1 million yen but a 30% chance you lose 1 million yen, you'd take it, right?
If you're unlucky enough to draw that 30%, just accept it.
Background and Points of Debate
Index investing is a strategy built around steadily contributing without trying to read the market, which assumes you won’t sweat short-term price swings. But as new NISA (Japan’s tax-free investment program) has pulled in more individual investors, threads like this one — full of people anxious about day-to-day price moves — have become more common. What split this thread was how to judge a stall lasting several months. On one side, posts like #22 (not included here) and #44 take the long view, pointing out that there have been downturns lasting dozens of months before, but the market always recovered eventually. On the other, the concern in #89 that Japan’s shrinking population is a structural reason the market might never recover. Both are predictions about the future that can’t be ruled out, and the thread itself never settled the question. Meanwhile, the argument from #13 and #8 that “whether it’s boring or not has nothing to do with whether it builds wealth” holds up as a sound investing principle — but as shown by #27’s Chinese-stock mutual fund crash, straying into individual stocks can turn a situation from merely “boring” into something far worse.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Whatever’s Live G) thread “Index Investing, or That Mind-Numbingly Boring Way to Invest.”
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