No Holy Grail: The Boring Truth to Trading Success

I am going to share with you the Holy Grail of trading and investing.  Ready for this?

There is no Holy Grail.  So sorry to disappoint.  What I CAN tell you is that navigating the markets takes a great deal of patience and experience and consistency.  When done correctly, trading should actually be rather boring.  It is a process of wash, rinse and repeat.

Think of some of the best athletes in history.  What do they all have in common?  They practiced, failed, adjusted, practiced, failed…. but they did not give up.  They persevered.  They studied and practiced and perfected the fundamentals until they could execute them nearly flawlessly, and then they studied and executed them some more.

Some of the tools that can potentially help a newer trader overcome some of the typical obstacles of the process could be found in your local library or online through books and articles that focus not necessarily on fundamental or technical analysis, but on probabilities, statistics, and human emotion.  One of the biggest struggles we all have in the beginning of our trading journeys is getting out of our own way.  I believe Henry Ford penned the phrase “whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right”.  I also believe I may be paraphrasing that quote, but I’m pretty sure you get the point.  Mindset is a major key in the demise or success of any trader.  Getting to the point of consistent profitability can be a major journey for each and every one of us.  Having a mentor or just simply any support system can aid in the initial process, but this will all be for not if you cannot keep old habits from creeping back into the fray.

We are all told to develop a trade plan before we begin trading, but the real kicker is that initially we don’t know what we don’t know.  How many of you sat in front of your keyboard, frozen in thought, when tasked with this assignment?  If so, you are definitely not alone.  My first trade plan involved finding an instructor (or maybe two) that I meshed with personality-wise, and just doing what they did.  I would attend session after session and simply just copy what they did.  While this is not meant to be the end-all be-all, it is an excellent place to begin to develop a “baseline” of sorts to test and verify.  You will rather quickly determine if their style is repeatable through your actions, or if you need to change certain things to create your own style based on your personality.  I have said this countless times in the classes I instruct… you NEED to find a process that meshes with your own personality.  It needs to be repeatable and without any deviations.  Over groupings of at least 30 to 50 trades, you should see patterns of successes, failures, and opportunities for improvement.  After an adjustment or two, do several dozen more trades to see if the adjustment seems to improve the outcome or not.  Keep in mind that the markets can (and frequently will) change environments during these test phases, so be sure to factor this into the fray.  You may from time to time feel like a dog chasing its tail, but don’t let this deter you.  Keep fighting the good fight.

While you are in the process of developing your trade plan, watch as many recorded sessions as you can.  Take plenty of notes and re-read those notes over and over until it becomes almost second nature.  Your brain can only learn at a certain pace, and beyond that a form of waterlogged standstill tends to occur.  Take a break and embrace this process.  You are normal.  We all go through this.  Take two or three deep breaths and smile.  It gets better, providing you give yourself permission to be human.

Speaking of being human, I am fully aware that most of us want to win.  Let us back up and revisit the topic of sports for one more sec.  In baseball do they only allow 1 strike per batter up?  If every player was “right” more than “wrong”, there would only need to be 1 strike allowed.  Food for thought.

In the end, trading isn't about perfection—it's about persistence. It’s not about finding some mythical Holy Grail, but about building a process you can trust, one that fits you. The markets will test your patience, your discipline, and your mindset. But if you can embrace the grind, continue learning, stay coachable, and keep refining your approach, you'll move closer to the consistency you're after. Just like the best athletes, it's not about being perfect every time—it’s about showing up, learning from each swing, and stepping up to the plate again. So keep swinging. Keep studying. Keep going. That’s how progress happens