Is the Holy Grail found in loss management?

I have been trading off and on for about 10 years. I have experimented with multiple strategies over the years. I have tried moving average crosses, Bollinger band extreme retracements (my current favorite), and using all the common indicators, MACD, Stochastics, RSI, you name it. I have never been able to come up with an entry signal that's gets me into a winning trade much more than 40-50 percent of the time. Each time I start trading, I start off with a couple losers immediately and I get frustrated. I am only paper trading right now because I don't feel like I have the psychological confidence to enter real trades right now.

I have been thinking a lot about strategies lately and searching for a high success winning entry. Since I haven't found this Holy Grail for entries, I am beginning to believe that the real edge in trading comes from cutting losses short and letting winners run. I know there are a lot of pros on this board and I feel like this is a great place to get a little advice. Any thoughts or advice from anyone on this idea? Am I looking in the right direction?

First of all thank you for your post.

Many others traders took 10 years before they became consistently profitable.

You are right, it is about probability and money management also gaining skills to place yourself in a favourable position.

Personally I do not relate myself to indicators which you mentioned, Price Action is my bread and butter

Said that absolute truths or method do not exist in trading, the only truth will be in you finding a way that relates to your personality and availability to interact with the market in a way where light fluidity is acquired.

I like that you are cutting your focus on entries. Entries are what sell out of the box strategies and training courses and trading blogs and signal services, but its exits that make the profit.

I don't find it encourages me or re-pays the effort to delve into my win rates on various strategies I have used but its always interesting to see where & why I exited any trade. I find pyramiding a winning trade very hard as opposed to simply banking the profit. Yet that's where the real money lies, in making your winners so much greater than your losers that you can live with the losers as just a business overhead. This is absolutely a psychological issue rather than a technical one and demands investment of real funds - losing real money, and developing from that scenario as a trader, is an experience tha cannot be replicated on a demo.

Great advice, thanks for the responses. I like using price action as well. I am currently trying to learn more on that area as well. Any advice on educational material in that area? Seems like that knowledge is mostly gained with time behind the screen. I like the idea of losses being part of the business model. What a great way to look at it. You are defiantly gonna have losses with any business. Just a matter of controlling it. Please keep the advice coming. Good stuff.

If you gave a 100% certain profitable trading system to 10 traders, 9 would still lose money.

Everyone spends many years and many thousands on chasing a holy grail system and no time or money on sorting out their own subconscious emotional and psychological problems that prevent them from making easy money and being successful. It mostly boils down to your subconscious belief system, not your trading system.