War is fought by the army.

There's a line from The Art of War: "Move with the discipline of a forest, strike with the speed of wind, attack like raging fire, remain immovable like a mountain." When you can't find an opening, stay as steady and calm as a mountain; when retreating, keep your formation as orderly and disciplined as a forest; when you spot your opponent's weakness, strike with the swiftness and decisiveness of the wind; once you've locked on, let the profits roll in and spread like an inferno.

The essence of battle is about maximizing gains when you win and minimizing losses when you lose.

It means that every time you win, you win big; but when you lose, you don't suffer serious harm. Over time, through repetition, if you're not the one who stands out, then who is?

This requires you to be a good executor.

A good executor is someone who draws the wrong stratagem every time, falls into enemy traps every time, yet consistently brings nearly their entire force back home unscathed.

Take two managers. One has me as a subordinate; the other has Lao Wang.

Both managers have a hit rate of about 10%. By my ninth campaign, I return mostly intact and can launch the tenth campaign, meaning I'll likely wait out the moment my manager gets lucky. Meanwhile, Lao Wang loses more than half his strength each time and won't survive three or four campaigns before being crippled. He won't live to see his manager's lucky break.

Eventually, my manager gets it right on the first try. The boss thinks it looks good and lets my manager win. Then they reshuffle: my manager leads Lao Wang's group, and Lao Wang's manager takes over mine. But Lao Wang's manager wins instead.

The boss immediately realizes the problem isn't the managers—it's Lao Wang and me.

I'm tougher than Lao Wang. So the boss promotes me to manager.

To stay in that managerial seat, what do I need? I need to cultivate a team as resilient as I once was.

That's the key to winning, without exception. Victory depends on execution, not decision-making.

Near-zero losses mean you can cross the battlefield infinitely, make seven entries and exits at will. You'll eventually get lucky, right? If you guess wrong, you lose nothing; if you guess right, you win. Isn't that stable profitability?

Buffett once said, "The first rule of investing is never lose. The second rule is never forget the first rule." Most people don't understand this. Buffett started as a high-frequency trader in his early years; most people aren't like that. Most people interpret "never lose" as "never invest." If you don't invest, you won't lose—but you also won't win. If you've had similar experiences to young Buffett, you'll instantly grasp his meaning. If you trade thousands of times a year, miss doesn't mean loss, and hits mean profit—who wouldn't win? That's why consistently not losing means you'll eventually win: you outlast everyone else. Your loss rate is near zero; theirs is positive. Over time, they exit the battlefield, and you collect their gear.

Lowering your loss per engagement is what truly matters.

Your decision success rate may remain consistently low, so you should never rely on picking the right stock or making high-accuracy decisions. What drives success is a near-zero loss rate. Because losses are so minimal, you can actually achieve Buffett's principles. How do you approach zero loss? It demands almost paranoid preparation and meticulous execution.

Before entering a trade, there must be a plan: at what price to enter initially, at what price to average down the first time, at what price to average down the second time, and exactly how much to buy each time—all predetermined and executed on schedule. If prices continue falling, at what point do you stop out? Conversely, if prices rise, at what point do you take profits? These profit-taking ranges, stop-loss ranges, and risk-reward ratios are all calculated in advance.

Then you simply execute.

How much you expect to earn or how much you're willing to lose before admitting defeat and exiting—all are set beforehand. There are no ad-hoc decisions. Whether you win or lose, it's all predetermined.

If a swing trade ends with a stop-out and a loss, you conduct a post-trade review. You re-examine whether the chosen instrument was wrong, whether the entry point was wrong, whether the first and second average-down positions were wrong, and whether the position sizing was wrong.

How do you examine this? Through backtesting—plugging the same trading conditions into hundreds of prior similar trades. After testing, you discover that doing something the same way 100 times guarantees 30 losses. You accept that because rejecting those 30 losses means rejecting the other 70 wins.

Profit and loss share the same source.

So if the trading system remains sound, you won't change anything because of this loss.

Only when you find that after modifying the system, it becomes 80 winning trades and 20 losing ones, do you call it systematic improvement.

What is a trading system? It's rules. Trading rules.

For example, which conditions trigger an entry, which trigger an exit, where is the stop-loss, where is the take-profit, what's the risk-reward ratio, and how is position sizing managed—all follow established patterns. "Following patterns" means nothing is decided on the fly. When a trading condition triggers, you won't suddenly go heavy, go light, or stand aside.

A tourist eats whatever they want, however they want. In an army, every movement is pre-planned—the routine for meals is fixed. Every army action is standardized; to change it, the entire army must change together. If you want to eat while lying down, the whole army eats lying down.

So as time stretches out, the tourist inevitably runs out of money.

Many people don't spend low-cost time building trading volume to refine their systems. Instead, they haven't even handled a weapon before diving in with an all-in bet.

Why does an investor achieve stable profitability?

Fundamentally, it's because you've found a vulnerability in something—whether it's an algorithm for a certain asset, a group of forgetful retail traders, or a flawed platform. What counts as a vulnerability? It's where you hold an edge over the other side. And so-called stable profitability is simply targeting the easy prey and exploiting them relentlessly.