There is a version of investing that treats returns as the primary goal. You pick the right asset, at the right time, in the right proportion. The returns follow. This is how most financial conversation is structured.
There is another version that treats survival as the primary goal. You build a portfolio you can hold across bear markets, recessions, personal financial emergencies, and long stretches of underperformance. The returns, eventually, follow from that.
The second version produces better outcomes for most people. Not because it is smarter, but because it is completable.
Compounding is not complicated. It requires one thing: that you remain invested long enough for the mathematics to work in your favor. The enemy of compounding is not a bad market. It is exit. Every time a portfolio is liquidated in fear, the compounding clock resets. The years of accumulation don't transfer.
This is why the best long-term investors are rarely the most analytically gifted. They are the ones with the temperament to stay. They survive the periods that cause others to leave, and the returns accumulate by default.
Returns are not something you earn by being right. They are something you receive for remaining. Survival is the strategy. Returns are the consequence.