Over the same bull market, why does one investor rotate right three times while another never rotates at all — and still ends up on the wrong side? The difference is usually not vision. It is whether there is a route map.
Before Position, a Route Map
The common argument goes: if you like it, go all in and hold; sector-hopping is a trader’s game, and a long-term investor needs no route map. That is half right. Long-term does not mean standing still the whole way. A bull-bear cycle is not one decision — it is a sequence of battles in a fixed order. Which battlefield to fight next, when to switch, what to switch into: all of it has a method. Before position sizing decides what to buy, the prior question is: which stage of the campaign are we in?
There is a framework that draws this as a military route map. It borrows the place names of famous campaigns; what it actually describes is the order of battle for sector capital. An investor fully invested without a map has no plan. Only hope.
Six Stages of the Route Map
The framework splits one full cycle into six stages:
- First Crossing of the Chishui: 2019, the growth board. The bear is barely over; test the blade where elasticity is greatest.
- Second Crossing: 2020, undervalued blue chips. Liquidity spreads; the weight shifts toward certainty.
- Third Crossing: 2021, the tech innovation board. The bold raid through Ziwu Valley — a gamble at the tail end of the run.
- Standoff at the Wei: second half of 2021, pull back and watch. Avoid crowded places; learn to hold cash. The temperament of sitting out belongs to another article — here we only record the route.
- Battle of the White Horse: 2022 to 2023, buying high-dividend stocks on dips. No broad rally, so take the one stretch that is certain.
- Night Crossing by Troop Ship: a swing trade in resource stocks. When the moment comes, act as quietly as a night crossing.
Six stages, one job each. The framework’s iron rule sits on the switch: a sector rotation requires two pieces of evidence lit at once — a fundamentals inflection and a sentiment reading. Missing either one, do nothing.
The Reversed Recording
The hardest objection goes like this: arranging past market history into “four crossings of the Chishui” is playing the tape in reverse. After the move ends, every step can be rationalized; standing at the time, the next step can never be derived. A map drawn after the fact, however elegant, only traces results.
This attack has to be answered head-on. The answer: the route map does not forecast; it approves. It does not care where the next battlefield is; it specifies what evidence a switch requires — a fundamentals inflection plus a sentiment check, both lights green before any move, verifiable in advance. Pulling back in the second half of 2021 was not because someone foresaw the next two years; it was because both validators stayed dark. The map does not tell you where the enemy is; it tells you under what conditions you are allowed to march.
The Price and the Boundary
The price should be stated plainly: inflections are only visible once complete. By the time both lights are green, the move has often already run a stretch. This method is guaranteed to miss the exact bottom and the exact top. What it buys is not perfect timing — it buys switches that do not go wrong. Anyone who wants to stamp on every extreme should not use this map.
One more question: what if you never switch and just hold a broad index? That works — but it is a different system, the dollar-cost-averaging kind, a separate species from the route map. The map is for active rebalancers. Do not mix the two: using a DCA discipline to fight campaigns, or campaign frequency to churn a DCA, loses on both ends.
Finally, the boundary. This map answers how to switch, not which stage we stand in today. It recommends no stocks and gives no timing calls. It is not a substitute for survival principles and does not touch cycle drivers; it governs one thing — which battlefield each battle is fought on, and on what authority the switch happens.
A map guarantees no victory. But an army without a map can only fight on morale.
