It takes a Moat to be the GOAT

 What does it really mean to have a sustainable trading edge? The common definition of an edge is positive expectancy, whether that's through back-testing or forward-testing (i.e. through live trading). But unless a strategy somehow relies upon very obscure information or meta-data that few have access to or are interpreting in a certain way (which is certainly possible), it's likely that one' edge will either erode with time or simply vanish as market behavior changes. More than one trader has seen a lucky streak, even for months at a time, come to a screeching halt as they realize they were simply at the right time at the right place for a while. Their unwavering adherence to their strategy (like selling VIX options during long periods of declining volatility) may have even made them momentarily rich, but will inevitably punish them later unless they are able to step away when volatility starts rising. 

Outside of trading, businesses and startups typically look for a "moat" to not only become profitable, but to speed ahead of the competition in a way that obstructs them from competing against them. Profits are then often funneled back into investments that give them an even bigger lead, not necessarily immediately reflected in rising revenue, but can be seen in a bigger competitive advantage that they have over others (that can also lead to improved pricing power). An example of a moat may be a patent that a drug or technology company has for X number of years, or an inter-connected ecosystem of products that users rely upon (and therefore can't free themselves from buying their products once sucked into the ecosystem).

I've been contemplating what the equivalent of a business moat might be in the context of trading. What I've concluded so far is that one of the biggest moats you can develop is adaptability to market conditions. This adaptability could arise from how you interpret the market patterns (e.g. "correction vs start of a new bear market"), which trading style to implement (e.g. scalping vs holding intraday), timeframe of choice (e.g. 1min chart vs 30min chart), willingness to shift bias, identification of market regime, etc. Not everyone has the same level of talent, so one cannot necessarily adapt to all of these parameters and more--but the ability to nevertheless adapt to changing conditions in the context of one's known strengths and weaknesses is key. For example, a relatively simple trader who only depends on a couple of moving averages to make daily trading decisions may completely ignore event-driven days that break all technical patterns. This person will do much better than say a event-driven trader that will burn away capital on trending/boring days. But the trader who can sit back and ride trends on slow days and crank it up when volatility hits will probably crush both of the aforementioned traders. So will the trader who absolutely masters one style and only pushes the gas pedal when the right conditions are present (once again, adapting to the changing market cycles). In this latter example, "adaptability" takes the form of the ability to properly adapt to sub-optimal market conditions, i.e. explicitly pausing trading. Adaptibility is the way to ensure that one's edge is always present, and imho the path to GOAT-dome.