Why can Buffett maintain long-term profitability?

Because the key to long-term profitability is to defend rather than attack

From his net asset value growth curve, we can see that Buffett's wealth increased significantly after he was 52 years old, in 1982, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had just broken through a wide range of fluctuations for nearly 18 years and started a violent bull market.

During these 18 years of fluctuations, many famous offensive traders at the time, such as Jerome Cardaniel and Andre Meyer, suffered varying degrees of losses or even went bankrupt. The main reason for their failure was almost all due to the aggressive trading style of high leverage + high frequency.

In addition, the trading god Livermore (the protagonist of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator) and Meriwether, the founder of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), who are well-known to traders, and other extremely excellent traders, eventually went bankrupt for the same reason.

On the other hand, Buffett's trading ideas have always been very conservative, and he strictly abides by his trading discipline in an almost abnormal way. That's why he was able to survive this 18-year-long shock and wait until the clouds cleared and the moon appeared.

He clearly knows that individuals cannot resist trends. All traders can do is to ensure that they do not lose money or lose less money, and live long enough in the market. The rest is to wait for the wind to come.

So friends, don't try to eat every market, be defensive instead of offensive.

I recommend watching Buffett's speech at the University of Florida more than 20 years ago, which lasted an hour and a half and was very appetizing.

https://youtu.be/2MHIcabnjrA?si=qiJw38lb7iv_rJHC