The central theme of this book is that there is no holy grail for the markets, rather there are millions of holy grails for the markets. Each of us has one in us that is unique. It is our own personal holy grail and the main task of any arbitrager on acid is to find his/her inner holy grail and drink to life. Tharp prefaces the book with humility: "this book simply contains my beliefs and opinions." He sets his objectives in writing it in a straight forward manner: to help the reader find his/her holy grail and a winning trading system that is right for him/her.
Tharp says that market participants go through stages of curiosity, to questioning advisers on what to buy, to questioning experts on how to trade. He calls that last stage the quest for a holy grail system. And many get systems from others that look promising but end up losing them most if not all of their trading capital. He says the metaphor of the holy grail is personal freedom. And the true secret about making money in the markets is that it is done by an individual who finds himself, achieves his own potential, and gets in tune with the markets. He thinks for himself and develops his own personal strategies.
In addition to thinking for one's self, the grail metaphor symbolizes the ability to enjoy what is, to accept wins and losses as they come as part of trading. It also symbolizes personal discipline, self control. The winning trader is not controlled by fear and greed, but he controls his money, his risk. While some say trading is part system, part position sizing, and part psychology, Tharp argues that it is 100% psychology and that one's system and position sizing is part of his psychology. He tells the funny story that Ed Seykota taught a college class Donchian's moving average crossover system in one week and then worked another eight weeks to convince the class to simply trade the system. Additionally, Tharp holds that anyone can learn to be successful in the markets through changing their psychology by modelling successful predecessors, an endeavor called: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Tharp claims to have been successful in helping traders go through NLP to model successful traders. These modelers have been able to achieve similar success to those they model. He says that finding a winning system that works for a given individual is a wholly mental process.
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