Jie to Zhong Fu: holding shares for a higher price

Date not recorded · A business friend trading in shares · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 60 Jié (Limitation), line 6 (top) moving, changing to Hexagram 61 Zhōng Fú (Inner Truth).

Original text

有商友某氏。請占株式高下。筮得節之中孚。爻辭曰。上六苦節貞凶。悔亡。斷曰。此卦澤上有水之象。澤有水。盈則通之。不盈則塞之。通塞者。是爲水之節制也。上爻當澤之上口。宜通而塞。是過於節也。水流而不止。流水甘也。上塞而不流。則爲停潦。甘亦苦矣。故曰苦節貞凶。今足下占株式高低。得此爻象。株式者。財用之資。財源猶如水源。宜流通。不宜壅塞。況上爻當時位已極。若塞而不窮。好爲壟斷。以期高價。令人迫蹙困苦。無以爲生。防苦極生變。則苦人者反而自苦。取凶之道。亦取窮之道也。宜速開通。斯可免凶矣。其人聞之。即日賣脫。後其價隨即低落。

In plain words

A business friend asked Takashima to divine whether share prices would go up or down. The cast gave Jie with its top line moving, changing into Zhong Fu. The line reads: "Six at the top: bitter restraint; persisting brings misfortune; regret vanishes."

Takashima's judgment: this hexagram is water above the lake. When a lake has water, it is let out when full and held back when not; letting through and holding back is how the water is regulated. The top line is the lake's outlet: it ought to let water through but blocks it instead, which is restraint carried too far. Flowing water is sweet; water dammed at the top and not flowing becomes stagnant, and the sweet turns bitter. Hence "bitter restraint; persisting brings misfortune".

You asked about share prices and drew this line. Shares are a means of wealth, and a source of wealth is like a source of water: it should flow, not be dammed. Besides, the top line is already at the limit of its time and place. If you keep holding, trying to corner the market for a higher price and squeezing others until they cannot make a living, beware of hardship turning into upheaval: the one who makes others suffer ends up suffering himself. That is the road to misfortune and to ruin. Open the sluice quickly, and you can avoid it.

The friend sold that very day, and the price fell soon afterwards.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the top line of Jie is read.
The image is water above the lake: storing and releasing the lake is "restraint", and shares are likened to a water source that should flow, not be dammed.
The line's place is the top: the lake's outlet, and the limit of the moment, read as prices having peaked, so do not hold any longer.
"Bitter restraint": dammed water turning from sweet to bitter, read as hoarding to corner the market, which will come back to hurt the hoarder. Takashima adds a moral judgment: a practice that squeezes others is itself the misfortune.

About the outcome

That the friend sold that day and the price then fell is Takashima's record. Advising someone to sell when prices are already high is cautious advice to begin with, and the time the price then fell is the one that got written down. This site does not treat it as evidence, nor as investment advice.

Applying it to your situation

"Bitter restraint" is restraint overdone, until the sweet turns bitter. Is something you are holding on to tightly a sensible restraint, or has it become stagnant water? Would loosening your grip be better for you and for others?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

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