Grid trading vs trend following

Why the grid curve looks better

A grid harvests small profits repeatedly as price oscillates through its levels, so closed-trade statistics look outstanding — high win rate, low variance, smooth equity. The risk lives in the open positions, which do not appear in those statistics at all.

In a trend the grid accumulates an ever-larger losing position against the move, with no stop, and the account is destroyed by exactly the market behaviour every other strategy would have profited from. That is not an implementation flaw; it is the design.

Trend following is uncomfortable and bounded

A trend system loses on most of its trades and makes money on a minority of large ones. That is psychologically hard and mathematically fine — at 2:1 reward-to-risk, break-even is around 34%, so a 40% win rate is a working system.

The key property is that each loss is bounded by the stop. Ten consecutive losses at 1.5% risk is uncomfortable and survivable; there is no equivalent statement for a grid.

What to ask a vendor

Where is the stop loss. Any product that avoids answering — "smart recovery", "averaging", "no stop needed" — is telling you the risk has been deferred rather than managed. See martingale.