The genius here isn't in avoiding losses—any sensible person grasps that—but in treating capital preservation as something altogether separate from profit-seeking. Buffett is essentially saying that once you've *stopped* thinking about getting rich, you're finally positioned to become wealthy, because you'll make decisions from a place of caution rather than desperation. A young investor who obsesses over beating the market average typically takes outsized risks that wipe out a decade of gains in a single bad quarter; the one who simply refuses to gamble away her principal, accepting modest returns, quietly compounds her way to real security. The second rule's circularity is the point—it's a reminder that your first rule will always be tested, and you must return to it again and again.