New equity highs are rare by construction - each one requires exceeding everything that came before. Even strong records spend 60-75% of their days underwater, and stretches of six to eighteen months without a new high are entirely normal.
Knowing your strategy's typical flat time is a practical inoculation. If your backtest shows a median of four months between highs and a maximum of eleven, then month six of a flat stretch is information about nothing at all, and treating it as evidence is how working systems get abandoned.
It also sets expectations for anyone you report to. A record quoted only by annual return hides the fact that most of the experience of owning it consists of waiting.
Related: drawdown-duration, underwater-curve, high-water-mark, process-over-outcome