Talking About Stopping the Holy Grail Hunt

“A system with 90% win rate” “Logic that works in any market” — I once seriously pursued such things. Looking back, it was simply chasing something that doesn’t exist. In this article, I write about what I learned after that “Holy Grail hunt.”

In the FX world, the Holy Grail refers to an “absolutely unbeatable perfect trading rule.” Almost every trader pursues it at least once, and many spend time and money in that search.

I was no exception. I would try a new indicator combination and think, “This is it,” only to switch to another method days later, thinking, “No, that’s not it.” I can’t count how many times this cycle repeated.

Once you enter this cycle, you remain in a perpetual state of “preparation.” Thinking, “the real thing will come after I find a better method,” you never actually start the real trading. This is the essential problem of the Holy Grail hunt.

One day, while reviewing my trade logs, I realized something.

The same signals produced profits when followed by the rules, but produced losses when I changed my judgment midway. The issue wasn’t the method itself but that I, the one executing, was wavering.

In other words, the core issue was not “which method to use” but “whether you can follow the rules.” No matter how excellent the method, if the executor is driven by emotion, it’s meaningless.

The conclusion was to move toward a system that eliminates human judgment.

When I started developing EAs, my perspective shifted dramatically.

During discretionary trading, I focused on “what entry conditions are correct,” but when building an EA, the question becomes “after repeating this rule for years and thousands of times, will it statistically be positive?”

Asking “Is this entry correct?” fluctuates with each win or loss. But asking “If this rule is repeated 10,000 times, is the expectancy positive?” is answered by statistics.

The moment I stopped chasing the Holy Grail was the moment I shifted from seeking a way to win once, to creating a long-term statistically positive rule and building a flawless execution system around it.

When I hunted for the Holy Grail, I believed “a method that yields losses means it needs improvement.” Now I see it the other way around.

There is no method that avoids losing trades entirely. If there were a 100% win-rate system, either the sample size is small or it is overfitted to historical data.

Shoken Ryuu’s win rate is about 84%. That means 16% of trades are losses. Yet the profits accumulated from the remaining 84% trades are sufficient to stay positive in the long run. Whether you view those 16% losses as a defect or as an acceptable cost dramatically changes your stance toward the system.

Looking back, I don’t think what was truly needed from chasing the Holy Grail was “a better method.”

What was needed were three things.

If you have these three, any system can work, even without a “perfect method.” Conversely, if any one is missing, even a brilliant method won’t last long.

The reason I spent 11 years backing Shoken Ryuu with backtests was to ensure I could convince myself that this method is truly effective in the long term. It wasn’t about perfection; it was about building enough justification, which is reflected in the numbers.

• The Holy Grail = a method that can never lose does not exist
• The problem was not the method, but execution accuracy that wavered due to emotions
• A turning point was shifting from “a method that guarantees one win” to “a system that perfectly executes a long-term statistically positive rule”
• Losing trades aren’t defects; they are a cost that comes with a method whose expectancy is positive
• What’s needed are: sufficient backtesting, an emotion-elimination framework, and proper money management

※This article is provided for information purposes and is not investment solicitation. The results shown are past performance and do not guarantee future profits. FX/CFD trading involves risk. Please make investment decisions at your own risk.