“The markets are the same now as they were five to ten years ago because they keep changing – just like they did then.” – Ed Seykota
New traders make the mistake of looking for the perfect trading system with the perfect entries and exits that work every time. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. If there was a 100% winning system, someone would own the world pretty quickly through compounding.
Profitable trading is all about finding an edge and capitalizing on it. No trading system wins all the time because the market changes constantly. The same signals are not profitable in bull markets, bear markets, and range bound markets regardless of how great the signals are. Moving averages can work in trends, overbought/oversold oscillators can work in trading ranges, and MACD can work in markets that have wide price swings. No trading signal is profitable in every market environment, and no technical indicator is valuable in all types of markets.
Market price action is like a river that is constantly flowing and changing. You can’t trade the same market the same way every time and expect the same results. There is no Holy Grail in trading because it’s never the same price action, and you aren’t the same trader you were yesterday.