Everyone knows that the Holy Grail of investing and trading is a myth. Finding a good technical analysis tool that will give you a trading system that wins all the time is called the holy grail of trading. This means that one would never have a losing trade, not to mention consecutive losing trades, never have an equity curve drawdown, and after five winning trades in a row will just keep on delivering winning trades forever! There is simply no technical analysis or system that wins on every trade.

Then why do most losing traders act as if there is or should be a trading system holy grail? You know the symptoms. When considering a new system to trade, losing traders will only consider those that have had a strong winning record for the prior month or quarter. They will jump from one system to another looking for the latest hot system, passing up or abandoning good systems that have had a good long-term record of accomplishment simply because they may have lost on the last three, four, or five trades. A good system can and will have five losers in a row. Likewise, a bad system can and will have five winners in a row. Therefore, selecting a trading system based on its most recent short-term record is a losers game - its the loser looking for the next system with a holy grail mentality.

Winners, on the other hand, know how to use good technical analysis that will properly evaluate a trading system to determine if it is good or not. Once they have found a good system and a technical analysis tool that delivers superior returns consistently over a long period of time (years), they stick with it. Even after they have had five losing trades in a row, they stick with it. Because they know while the Holy Grail does not exist, a good system will follow those losing trades with winners that more than offset the losers and deliver superior returns.

Think like a winner.