Martingale forex

Martingale Forex.

Trading forex with a Martingale money management system will almost inevitably lead to blowing up an account. I’ve written about this inevitable outcomes repeatedly over the past six months. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I figured that visual proof would alleviate any lingering hopes once and for all.

Recall that Martingale systems aim to never lose money. Instead of accepting losses and moving on, a Martingale betting strategy doubles the previous bet. Whenever a win finally does occur, all losses up until that point are wiped out. The trade also gains the same amount of profit that the original trade hoped to capture.

The experiment assumes that the trader uses fixed fractional money management set at 1% of the account value. Recall from earlier experiments that a 1% risk value will almost never blow up an account after 200 trades. The percent accuracy for the trades remains at 50%, which is perfectly random. The random number file has been upgraded to include 10 million random numbers instead of the previous half a million.

The goal of the exercise is to focus on the risk of ruin rather than the profits accrued. As time goes on, the likelihood of ruin increases with the number of trades placed. A trade is each time a new transaction enters. It does not matter whether or not the last trade was a winner or a loser.

Fifty trades on most Martingale systems corresponds to anything from several days to several weeks. The level of aggression used in the trade level (i. e., the pip distance used to open a new trade) is what most strongly affects the amount of time required to reach fifty trades.

Placing 50 trades shows what most traders know. The returns look fairly nice at that point. A return of 20% on the account shows a 40% probability of occurring. The risk of wiping out the account looks meek at 8.5%.

Increasing the number of trades to 200, which corresponds to several weeks or months, the odds of outright failure skyrocket to 35%. The lucky traders that have not yet blown up show returns ranging from 20% all the way to 300%. The total risk is more apparent, although many traders fall victim to the lure of quick, large returns. If it all looks too easy at this point in time, that’s because it is.

Going out to 1,000 trades, which I roughly ballpark as the amount of trades an average expert advisor might complete in 9 months to a year, is where the inevitable result is obvious. The odds of reaching a zero balance reach 95%. A tiny handful of traders are floating huge returns. As the number of trades increases from 1,000 to 2,000 to 10,000, the tiny fraction of accounts left eventually dwindles down to zero.

Great stuff… could you possibly discuss what it would look like if you were to use an inverse martingale approach?

perhaps where you double up the size every time you win and when a loss finally occurs you drop back down to initial size.

Thanks for your comment. You would certainly blow up an account increasing the risk by 100% after wins. The reason is that a loss would eventually occur. That loss would wipe out all gains to date, plus result in a loss relative to where you started.

Using a Martingale sytem isn’t my favorite either. As you Shaun, I agree that it will blow up your account in time. One has to be prepared to say that a trade was wrong and close with a loss.

Bob has the idea of are reversed Martingale where you start a grid system when the market runs in your favor. Not a bad idea, but I would use it with a trailing stop on every grid order the reversed Martingale would open. That way, the grid orders would all close with a profit and so would the primary order.

It could be something like this:

Order 1: start protective stop at + x pips and open secondary order in the same direction with the same lot size.

Order 2: start protective stop at + x pips and open third order in the same direction with the same lotsize. Move the protective stop from order 1 by trailing etc….

Should the market reverse, then all orders would be stopped out by a trailing stop.

Could this work?

I’m not sure. Using bell curve (Gaussian) statistics, the idea would definitely fail. Markets, however, follow power law distributions. They are far more wild.

The turtle traders in the 1980s used a money management system that’s almost identical to what you described. I recommend that you Google Turtle Traders and read through the pdf floating around on the web. It’s a very interesting money management idea.

Thanks for the great video. I really appreciate you proving the riskiness of Martingale system. Since you have that software/system using which you can test Martingale systems (and modified versions), can you please make a video on a martingale closing as basket of profit ?

For example, Open B1 0.01, if goes negative by 50 pips then open S1 0.03 and if S1 goes positive by 25 pips, it closes the whole run (both B1 and S1 all together as basket).

The example I gave you is a bit different from typical martingale because in typical martingale system, we experience the drawdown first. The example I gave, on the basis of pre-trade balance, there would be no drawdown in real.

Hope I have explained my example and point enough so as to make you understand the concept.

Looking forward to your new video. Thanks for being there. 🙂

Have a nice weekend.

Thank you for the helpful comment. Your basket idea is really just probability shifting. The worse that the situation gets, you’re trying to increase the probability of a profitable exit by moving the take profit closer.

There’s not a fundamental difference between this and Martingale because you are tripling the risk while increasing the chance of a profitable exit. The compounding risk problem still remains. My off the cuff expectation is that this approach would likely speed up an account blow up.

Thanks for your reply. Yes you are absolutely right. Using the basket concept of trades closing with martingale is an absolute death run. But Shaun, lets assume, (AN EXAMPLE) if the account size is $5K and the leverage is 1000 (some brokers are offering this on micro account with the limit of 5 lots as maximum trade size per trade). Using 5K and 1000 leverage and trading the initial lot at 0.08 and multiplier of 2, and using this on GBPJPY pair, I don’t think we will blow our account. Or even assuming 0.04 initial lot, we will make profit. I do understand that we can’t make 500% in a year but still we can make 50% per year which is quite good a Return on Investment as compared to what is being offered at banks at the moment.

Your kind comments are highly appreciated as I feel really satisfied and having a feel of being educated by a true gentleman and professional. 🙂

I used the Martingale Money Management system a while ago, and posted into a Forum that i’m using it. Then a Senior Trader which seems to have high experience wrote this:

“Don’t use Martingale, use the Kelly System instead”.

I googled about the Kelly Formula, which seems to be some formula to bet the optimal amount on horse races. However it’s not clear to me if this concept can be applied to Forex and if that’s even useful.

So my question is, could you write an article about the Kelly Formula which explains how it could be applied to Forex and if the formula is useful in any way? Would be great.

Thanks for the suggestion – that’s a great idea. I put the Kelly formula onto our publishing schedule for some time within the next month. Stay tuned!

After loosing so much to martingale and other systems out there, you seem to know many strategies that doesn’t work. Kindly advise and encourage on the system that works instead.

Mike Cleveland says.

Wow, that myfxbook looks pretty bad. Have you given up that method? Have you found any other method of trading profitably?

Martingale Trading System.

Martingale trading system — is based on the popular betting (gambling) system of the 18th century France. The main principle of this system is to double the bet each time you lose so that if you win (considering a 100% bet win/loss each time) you recover a previous loss and will also gain the first bet amount. If one had an infinite amount of money, this strategy would be a sure-fire thing as with the infinite amount of bets the necessary result will with probability 1 eventually come. The problem is that no trader possesses an infinite wealth and thus utilizing this strategy eventually leads to a wiped account. Although it's a very popular Forex trading system and is used in many paid Forex expert advisors, I strongly don't recommend trading with it.

Theoretically bullet-proof system. Practically unsound. Reward/risk ratio can reach extremely low values.

How to Trade?

Any currency pair and timeframe will work. Determine your basic position size. Place an order in a random direction (Buy or Sell) with some fixed stop-loss and the same take-profit. After the SL or TP is triggered you either win or lose. If you win, set the position size to the initial and go the step 3. If you lose, double the position size and go to step 3. If you have infinite trading account balance, eventually you'll win a lot. If your account balance is limited you'll lose it eventually.

No example chart is present for this trading system as there is nothing important to be shown on the chart. Let's view the following example.

You start with $10,000 account and can trade with mini Forex lots (0.1 of the standard lot) and decide to trade on EUR/USD. You define your basic position size as 0.1 lots. You decide to go Long setting stop-loss at 40 pips (or $4). The take-profit is set to the same value. You lose the position. Now your account balance is $9,996. You double your next position size to 0.2 lots, so that using the same stop-loss and take-profit levels you risk $8 and also have a chance to win $8. You decide to change the position's direction and go Short. You win and now you've recovered lost $4 and also won $4. Your account balance is $10,004. You return your position to initial 0.1 lots and start over. With $10,000 account balance and $4 basic risk value you'll have to lose 11 positions in a row to wipe your account. You'll have to win 250 positions to double your balance.

Use this strategy at your own risk. EarnForex can't be responsible for any losses associated with using any strategy presented on the site. It's not recommended to use this strategy on the real account without testing it on demo first.

Discussion:

Do you have any suggestions or questions regarding this strategy? You can always discuss Martingale Trading System with the fellow Forex traders on the Trading Systems and Strategies forum.

Forex Trading the Martingale Way.

Would you be interested in a trading strategy that is practically 100% profitable? Most traders will probably reply with a resounding "Yes!" Amazingly, such a strategy does exist and dates all the way back to the 18th century. This strategy is based on probability theory, and if your pockets are deep enough, it has a near-100% success rate.

Known in the trading world as the martingale, this strategy was most commonly practiced in the gambling halls of Las Vegas casinos. It is the main reason why casinos now have betting minimums and maximums, and why the roulette wheel has two green markers (0 and 00) in addition to the odd or even bets. The problem with this strategy is that to achieve 100% profitability, you need to have very deep pockets; in some cases, they must be infinitely deep.

No one has infinite wealth, but with a theory that relies on mean reversion, one missed trade can bankrupt an entire account. Also, the amount risked on the trade is far greater than the potential gain. Despite these drawbacks, there are ways to improve the martingale strategy. In this article, we'll explore the ways you can improve your chances of succeeding at this very high-risk and difficult strategy.

What is the Martingale Strategy?

Popularized in the 18th century, the martingale was introduced by the French mathematician Paul Pierre Levy. The martingale was originally a type of betting style based on the premise of "doubling down." A lot of the work done on the martingale was done by an American mathematician named Joseph Leo Doob, who sought to disprove the possibility of a 100% profitable betting strategy.

The system's mechanics involve an initial bet; however, each time the bet becomes a loser, the wager is doubled such that, given enough time, one winning trade will make up all of the previous losses. The 0 and 00 on the roulette wheel were introduced to break the martingale's mechanics by giving the game more than two possible outcomes other than the odd versus even, or red versus black. This made the long-run profit expectancy of using the martingale in roulette negative, and thus destroyed any incentive for using it.

To understand the basics behind the martingale strategy, let's look at a simple example. Suppose we had a coin and engaged in a betting game of either heads or tails with a starting wager of $1. There is an equal probability that the coin will land on heads or tails, and each flip is independent, meaning that the previous flip does not impact the outcome of the next flip. As long as you stick with the same directional view each time, you would eventually, given an infinite amount of money, see the coin land on heads and regain all of your losses, plus $1. The strategy is based on the premise that only one trade is needed to turn your account around.

Assume that you have $10 to wager, starting with a first wager of $1. You bet on heads, the coin flips that way and you win $1, bringing your equity up to $11. Each time you are successful, you continue to bet the same $1 until you lose. The next flip is a loser, and you bring your account equity back to $10. On the next bet, you wager $2 hoping that if the coin lands on heads, you will recoup your previous losses and bring your net profit and loss to zero. Unfortunately, it lands on tails again and you lose another $2, bringing your total equity down to $8. So, according to martingale strategy, on the next bet you wager double the prior amount to $4. Thankfully, you hit a winner and gain $4, bringing your total equity back up to $12. As you can see, all you needed was one winner to get back all of your previous losses.

However, let's consider what happens when you hit a losing streak:

Once again, you have $10 to wager, with a starting bet of $1. In this scenario, you immediately lose on the first bet and bring your balance down to $9. You double your bet on the next wager, lose again and end up with $7. On the third bet, your wager is up to $4 and your losing streak continues, bringing you down to $3. You do not have enough money to double down, and the best you can do is bet it all. If you lose, you are down to zero and even if you win, you are still far from your initial $10 starting capital.

Trading Application.

You may think that the long string of losses, such as in the above example, would represent unusually bad luck. But when you trade currencies, they tend to trend, and trends can last a very long time. The key with martingale, when applied to trading, is that by "doubling down" you essentially lower your average entry price. In the example below, at two lots, you need the EUR/USD to rally from 1.263 to 1.264 to break even. As the price moves lower and you add four lots, you only need it to rally to 1.2625 instead of 1.264 to break even. The more lots you add, the lower your average entry price. Even though you may lose 100 pips on the first lot of the EUR/USD if the price hits 1.255, you only need the currency pair to rally to 1.2569 to break even on your entire holdings.

This is also a clear example of why deep pockets are needed. If you only have $5,000 to trade, you would be bankrupt before you were even able to see the EUR/USD reach 1.255. The currency may eventually turn, but with the martingale strategy, there are many cases when you may not have enough money to keep you in the market long enough to see that end.

Why Martingale Works Better with FX.

One of the reasons the martingale strategy is so popular in the currency market is because, unlike stocks, currencies rarely drop to zero. Although companies easily can go bankrupt, countries cannot. There will be times when a currency is devalued, but even in cases of a sharp slide, the currency's value never reaches zero. It's not impossible, but what it would take for this to happen is too scary to even consider.

The FX market also offers one unique advantage that makes it more attractive for traders who have the capital to follow the martingale strategy: the ability to earn interest allows traders to offset a portion of their losses with interest income. This means that an astute martingale trader may want to only trade the strategy on currency pairs in the direction of positive carry. In other words, he or she would buy a currency with a high interest rate and earn that interest while, at the same time, selling a currency with a low interest rate. With a large number of lots, interest income can be very substantial and could work to reduce your average entry price.

The Bottom Line.

As attractive as the martingale strategy may sound to some traders, we emphasize that grave caution is needed for those who attempt to practice this trading style. The main problem with this strategy is that often, seemingly sure-fire trades may blow up your account before you can turn a profit or even recoup your losses. In the end, traders must question whether they are willing to lose most of their account equity on a single trade. Given that they must do this to average much smaller profits, many feel that the martingale trading strategy is entirely too risky for their tastes.

Martingale Strategy – How To Use It.

There are a few reasons why this strategy is attractive to currency traders.

Firstly it can, under certain conditions give a predictable outcome in terms of profits. It’s not a sure bet, but it’s about as close as you can get.

Secondly it doesn’t rely on an ability to predict absolute market direction. This is useful given the dynamic and volatile nature of foreign exchange. It yields a better return the more skillful you are.

But it can still work when your trade picking skills are no better than chance.

And thirdly, currencies tend to trade in ranges over long periods – so the same levels are revisited over many times. As with grid trading, that behavior suits this strategy.

Martingale is a cost-averaging strategy. It does this by “doubling exposure” on losing trades. This results in lowering of your average entry price.

The important thing to know about Martingale is that it doesn’t increase your odds of winning . Your long-term expected return is still the same. It’s governed by your success in picking winning trades and the right market. You can’t escape from that.

What the strategy does do is delay losses. Under the right conditions, losses can be delayed by so much that it seems a sure thing.

How It Works.

In a nutshell: Martingale is a cost-averaging strategy. It does this by “doubling exposure” on losing trades. This results in lowering of your average entry price. The idea is that you just go on doubling your trade size until eventually fate throws you up one single winning trade. At that point, due to the doubling effect, you can exit with a profit.

A Simple Win-Lose Game.

This simple example shows this basic idea. Imagine a trading game with a 50:50 chance of winning verses losing.

Table 1: Simple betting example.

I place a trade with a $1 stake. On each win, I keep the stake the same at $1. If I lose, I double my stake amount each time. Gamblers call this doubling-down .

If the odds are fair, eventually the outcome will be in my favor. And since I’ve been doubling my stake each time, when this happens the win recovers all of the previous losses plus the original stake.

This is thanks to the double-down effect. Winning bets always result in a profit. This holds true because of the fact that 2 n = ∑ 2 n -1 +1. That means the string of consecutive losses is recovered by the winning trade.

If you’re interested in experimenting with the toy system , here is my simple betting game spreadsheet:

A Basic Trading System.

In real trading there isn’t a strict binary outcome. A trade can close with a certain profit or loss. But this doesn’t change the basic the strategy. You just define a fixed movement of the underlying price as your take profit , and stop loss levels.

The following case shows this in action. I’ve set my take profit and stop loss at 20 pips.

Table 2: Averaging down trade entry levels in falling market.

I start with a buy to open order of 1 lot at 1.3500. The rate then moves against me to 1.3480 giving a loss of 20 pips. It reaches my virtual stop loss .

It’s a virtual stop loss because there would be no point in closing the trade, and opening a new one for twice the size. I keep my existing one open on each leg and add a new trade to double the size.

Martingale.

Complete Course.

A complete course for anyone using a Martingale system or planning on building their own trading strategy from scratch. It's written from a trader's perspective with explanation by example. Our strategies are used by some of the top signal providers and traders.

So at 1.3480 I double my trade size by adding 1 more lot. This gives me an average entry rate of 1.3490. My loss is the same, but now I only need a retracement of +10 pips to break even rather than 20 pips as before.

The act of “averaging down” means you double your trade size. But you also reduce the relative amount required to re-coup the losses. This is shown by the “break even” column in Table 2.

The break-even approaches a constant value as you average down with more trades. This constant value gets ever closer to your stop loss. This means you can catch a “falling market” very quickly and re-coup losses – even when there’s only a small retracement. Standard Martingale will always recover in exactly one stop distance, regardless of how far the market has moved against the position. (see Figure 1 ).

At trade #5, my average entry rate is now 1.3439. When the rate then moves upwards to 1.3439, it reaches my break-even.

I can close the system of trades once the rate is at or above that break even level. My first four trades close at a loss. But this is covered exactly by the profit on the last trade in the sequence.

The final P&L of the closed trades looks like this:

Table 3: Losses from previous trades are offset by the final winning trade.

Does Martingale Always Work?

In a pure Martingale system no complete sequence of trades ever loses. If the price moves against you, you simply double the size of the trade.

But such a system can’t exist in the real world because it means having an unlimited money supply and an unlimited amount of time . Neither of which are achievable.

In a real trading system, you need to set a limit for the drawdown of the entire system. Once you pass your drawdown limit, the trade sequence is closed at a loss. The cycle then starts again.

When you restrict the ability to drawdown, you’re departing from a theoretical Martingale system. And in doing so you’re using an approximation that will always have a failure point .

Doubling-down verses Probability of Loss.

Ironically, the greater your drawdown limit, the lower your probability of making a loss – but the bigger that loss will be. This is the Taleb dilemma .

The more trades you do, the more likely it is that those extreme odds will “come up” – and a long string of losses will wipe you out.

In Martingale the trade exposure on a losing sequence increases exponentially. That means in a sequence of N losing trades, your risk exposure increases as 2 N -1 . So if you’re forced to exit prematurely, the losses can be truly catastrophic .

On the other hand, the profit from winning trades only increases linearly. It’s proportional to half the profit per trade multiplied by total number of trades.

Winning trades always create a profit in this strategy. So if you pick winners 50% of the time (no better than chance) your total expected return from the winning trades would be:

Where N is the number of “trades” and B is the amount profited on each trade.

But your big one off losing trades will set this back to zero. For example, if your limit is 10 double-down legs, your biggest trade is 1024. You would only lose this amount if you had 11 losing trades in a row. The probability of that is (1/2) 11 . That means, every 2048 trades, you’d expect to lose once.

Your expected winnings are (1/2) x 2 11 x 1=1024 Your expected one off loss is -1024 Your net profit is 0.

So your odds always remain 50:50 within a practical system. That’s assuming your trade picking is no better than chance.

Your risk-reward is also balanced at 1:1 . But in this strategy your losses will all come in one big hit . So it may seem far worse than it is, especially if you’re unlucky and the happen at the start!

Martingale can’t improve your odds of winning. It just postpones your losses. See Table 4.

Table 4: Your winning odds aren’t improved by Martingale. Your net return is still zero.

Those people who’re trend followers at heart often believe it’s better to use a reversal the Martingale. The anti-Martingale or reverse Martingale tries to do the exact opposite of what’s described above. Basically these are trend following strategies that double up on wins, and cut losses quickly.

Stay Away from “Trending” Currencies.

The best opportunities for the strategy in my experience come about from range trading. And by keeping your trade sizes very small in proportion to your capital, that is using very low leverage. That way, you have more scope to withstand the higher trade multiples that occur in drawdown.

The most effective use of Martingale in my experience is as a yield enhancer.

There are dozens of other views however. Some people suggest using Martingale combined with positive carry trades. What that means is trading pairs with big interest rate differentials. For example, using the strategy of long-only trades on AUD/JPY.

The idea is that positive rollover credits accumulate because of the large open trade volumes.

I’ve never used this approach before. Because the risks are that currency pairs with carry opportunities often follow strong trends. These often see steep corrective phases as carry positions are unwound (reverse carry positioning).

This can happen violently . For example if there are unexpected changes in the interest rate cycle, or if there’s a sudden change in risk appetite in which case funds tend to move away from high-yielding currencies very quickly (read more about carry trading.)

Getting caught the wrong side of one of these corrections is just too big a risk in my view. Over the long term, Martingale suffers in trending markets (see return chart – opens in new window).

It’s also worth keeping in mind many brokers subject carry interest to a significant spread – which makes all but the highest yielding carry trades unprofitable. Some retail brokers don’t even credit positive rollovers at all. That’s a consequence of being at the end of the “ food chain ”.

The low yields mean your trade sizes need to be big in proportion to your capital for carry interest to make any difference to the outcome. As I said above, this is too risky with Martingale.

A strategy better suited to trending is Martingale in reverse.

Using Martingale as a Yield Enhancement.

As I mentioned before, I don’t suggested using Martingale as your main trading strategy. For it to work properly, you need to have a big drawdown limit relative to your trade sizes. If you’re trading with a sizable chunk of your capital, you’d risk “going broke” on one of the downswings.

The most effective use of Martingale in my experience is as a yield enhancer . I’ve applied the strategy I’m going to describe below over a 3 year time frame – with good results. This was done by trading the liquid part of a big portfolio. By capping the drawdown at 4% of the free cash and incrementally increasing it, I was able to get a reliable 0.4-0.6% overall return per month.

The least risky trading opportunities for this are pairs trading in tight ranges.

For example I’ve achieved good results using EUR/GBP and EUR/CHF during flat consolidation phases. In the case of EUR/CHF intervention policy is likely to see the pair trading in a tight range for now. Likewise EUR/GBP tends to have long range bound periods that the strategy thrives in.

Martingale can survive trends but only where there’s sufficient pullback. This is why you have to watch out for break-outs of significant new trends – watch out especially around key support/resistance levels.

Trading pairs that have strong trending behavior like Yen crosses or commodity currencies can be very risky.

You can download the complete trading system, as described here, or check my Excel spreadsheet .

The image below shows an example run covering a period of 3-months producing a 9% return.

My program trading module, which was effectively a Martingale robot (EA) was created from this basic design.

Calculate Your Drawdown Limit.

A good place to start is to decide the maximum open lots you’re able to risk. From this, you can work out the other parameters. To keep things simple, I’ll use powers of 2.

The maximum lots will set the number of stop levels that can be passed before the position is closed. In other words it’s the number of times the strategy will “double-down”. So for example, if your maximum total holding is 256 lots, this will allow doubling-down 8 times – or 8 legs. The relationship is:

If you close the entire position at the n th stop level, your maximum loss would be:

Here s is the stop distance in pips at which you double the position size. So, with 256 lots (micro lots), and a stop loss of 40 pips, closing at the 8th stop level would give a maximum loss of 10,200 pips. Closing at the 9th stop level would give a loss of 20,440 pips.

Tip Work out the average number of trades you can handle before a loss – use the formula 2 Legs+1 . So in the example here that’s just 2 9 , or 512 trades. So after 512 trades, you’d expect to have a string of 9 losers given even odds. This would break your system.

You can use my lot calculator in the Excel workbook to try out different trade sizes and settings.

The best way to deal with drawdown is to use a ratchet system . So as you make profits, you should incrementally increase your lots and drawdown limit. For example, see the table below.

Table 5: Ratcheting up the drawdown limit as profits are realized.

This ratchet is automatically handled in the trading spreadsheet. You just need to set your drawdown limit as a percentage of realized equity.

Warning Since Martingale trading is inherently risky your capital at risk shouldn’t ever exceed 5% of your account equity. See forexop’s money management section for more details.

Decide On an Entry Signal.

The system still needs to be triggered some how to start a buy or sell sequence. Any effective buy/sell signal can be used here. The better it is, the better the strategy will work.

In the examples here I’m using a simple moving average. When the rate moves a certain distance above the moving average line, I place a sell order. When it moves below the moving average line, I place a buy order. This system is basically trading false break-outs, also known as “fading”.

In my system, I’m using the 15 point moving average (MA) as my entry signal. The length of moving average you choose will vary depending on your particular trading time frame and general market conditions.

This is a very simple, and easily implemented triggering system. There are more sophisticated methods you could try out. For example using the Bollinger channel, other moving averages or any technical indicator.

Strong breakout moves can cause the system to reach the maximum loss level. So trading near to key support/resistance areas, in volatility squeezes, and before data releases should be minimized as far as possible.

For more details on trading setups and choosing markets see the Martingale eBook.

Set the Take Profit and Stop Loss.

The next two points to think about are.

When to double-down – this is your virtual stop loss When to close – your “take profit level”

When to double-down – this is a key parameter in the system. The “virtual” stop loss means you assume at that point the trade has gone against you. It’s a loser. So you double your lots.

Choose too small a value and you’ll be opening too many trades. Too big a value and it impedes the whole strategy.

The value you choose for your stops and take profits should ultimately depend on the time-frame you’re trading and the volatility . Lower volatility generally means you can use a smaller stop loss. I find a value of between 20 and 70 pips is good for most situations.

When to close Trades in Martingale should only be closed when the “entire system” is in profit. That is, when the net profit on the open trades is at least positive. As with grid trading, with Martingale you need to be consistent and treat the set of trades as a group, not independently.

A smaller take profit value, usually around 10-50 pips, often works best in this setup.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

A smaller take profit level has a higher probability of being reached sooner so you can close while the system is profitable. The profit gets compounded because the lots traded increase exponentially. So a smaller value can still be effective.

Using a smaller take profit doesn’t alter your risk reward. Although the gains are lower, the nearer win-threshold improves your overall trade win-ratio.

Simulations.

The table below shows my results from 10 runs of the trading system. Each run can execute up to 200 simulated trades. I started with a balance of $1,000 and drawdown limit 100% of that amount. The drawdown limit is automatically ratcheted up or down each time the realized P&L changes.

Table 6: Simulation results from the spreadsheet.

My final balance was $1,796 which gives an overall return of 79.6% on the initial starting amount.

The chart below shows a typical pattern of incremental profits. The orange line shows the relatively steep drawdown phases.

The spreadsheet is available for you to try this out for yourself. It is provided for your reference only. Please be aware that use of the strategy on a live account is at your own risk .

Pros and Cons of Martingale.

Why Use It:

It has a well defined set of trading rules that can be easily followed or programmed as an Expert Advisor. It has a statistically computable outcome with respect to profits and drawdowns. When applied correctly it can achieve an incremental profit stream. You don’t need to be able to predict the market direction .

Why Avoid It:

Averaging down is a strategy of avoiding losses rather than seeking profits. Martingale doesn’t increase your odds of winning. It just delays losses – for a long time if you’re lucky. It relies on assumptions about random market behavior which are not always valid. Markets do behave irrationally. The risk exposure increases exponentially , while the profits increase linearly. It can potentially run up catastrophic losses in practice because nobody has an unlimited amount of money. The risk v. s reward is balanced, but because the loss comes in one big hit it can be unacceptable.

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Thank you for your explanation and effort.

is it possible to program an EA to use martingale strategy in a ranging or non trending market and stop it.

if the market trends like cover a large predefined number of pips (eg 300 pips) in certain direction and then.

uses Martingale in reverse.

the ea should have a trend sensor according to result it changes the strategy.

do you think it will work? do you think it can be done?

The trading system is a lot more complicated then I thought. I’m glad you explained it in a simple and brief way with charts and graphs. A lot of financial advisors use tvalue. Martingale sounds a great way to become more knowledgeable in the trading system.

How a about hedging martiangle with price action..exam:candlestick or S nR.

Martingale can work really well in narrow range situations like in forex like when a pair remains within a 400 or 500 pip range for a good time. As the other comment said if there is a predictable rebounding the opposite way that is the ideal time to use it. Then the strategy has to be smart enough to predict when the rebounds happen and in what size. The amount of the stake can depend on how likely it is for a market run-off one way or the other, but if the range is intact martingale should still recover with decent profit.

How can I determine porportionate lot sizes by estimating the retracement size. Example,

EURUSD has gone up by 200 pips and I want to have proportionate lot sizes so that I can.

recover my 200 pips drawdown. My estimate is that retracement will be of only 10% or 20.

pips but I want to recover 200 pips by 5 lots and not by one constant lot based on my margin balance.

Is there any formula to work backwards and determine proportionate lots for such a situation?

I’m not sure I understand your question because if the order is already placed what good is it then knowing the size you need to recover? The recovery size you need would depend on where the other orders were placed and what the sizes were – you will have to do a manual calculation. Starting with a new set of orders, if you multiply the size by 6 (instead of 2) from the start that will recover in 20% of your stop distance. But you can’t change that multiple once you have open positions, the other calculations won’t work. Hope that helps.

Great article please I had like to know what are your trading numbers while using the martingale strategy.

The system I was using would make low single digit returns. Obviously you can leverage that up to anything you want but it comes with more risk.

I’ve been testing for a couple of years on the pair EURUSD with hourly data from 2005 to 2016.

My goal is to achieve a 20-25% on the first bet. If I have to double-down then I change my goal to just 1% because I realized that there are a few days just 4 or 5 in 10 years that are horrible if I keep on my 20% goal. So I assume that if the market is against me then I want to quit as soon as possible squeezing my potential earnings.

If leverage increases then :

• Slight oscillations on price easily moves me to the expected 20%. On a 200 leverage, if price moves only 0,1% in my direction I win. So even if the trend is against me, sometimes during an hour, the price oscillates on my side.

• Chances to bankruptcy are also higher. This is true. That’s why as soon as I double-down, I reduce the goal to just 1% from 20%.

• Tests show me that using such strategy I reduce half of the bankruptcy days if I double leverage.

One thing I think It could be interesting is to work more on the winning bets. I mean, now I close my bets as soon they achieve the 20% goal but working on leverage 100 or 200 and being in the right trend, it is easy to make a 100% or 200% profit. Any Ideas or known strategies about it are welcome.

Is this the Martingale ea in the downloads section?

Thank you for sharing this wonderful article. So you are talking about Dollar Cost Averaging system above. But I guess the maximum drawndown is not correct. Is the drawdown of the last trade or the whole cycle ?

The limit is for the whole cycle. The TP is not a take profit in the regular sense. It’s the point which the system doubles down so the trades “above it” remain open.

With the example I gave above this is how the whole cycle would look like just before closing:

Position Size Limit Drawdown.

Giving an effective total of 20480 pips ($2048 dollar amount if using micro account) which is where formula below comes from:

Max lots x ( 2 x Stop Loss ) x Lot size = 256 x (2 x 40) x 0.1.

I guess there is a typo. In your formula for maximum drawdown, you are assuming 20 pips TP, which becomes 40 pips when it gets multiplied with 1 or your are assuming 40 pips ? Secondly, the term maximum lot is the maximum lot size of 8th trade or total lots of 9 trades (1 original trade + 8 legs)?

Please see explanation above.

Have you heard about Staged MG? Sometimes called also Multi Phased MG?

It means that each time the market moves you take just a portion of the overall req. trade, and you.

continue only if the market goes in the “right” direction.

What do you think about this strategy?

Is it safer than regular MG?

BTW, can I have your please for a personal question?

I’ve seen variations like this before and some others.

In fact the Excel sim spreadsheet – forexop/?wpdmact=4508 – we have lets you do something like this.

It lets you use a different compounding factor other than the standard (2). So instead of 2x for example that you have with standard MG you can use 1.5 X or 1.2 X or any other factor.

The interesting thing is you say when the “market moves in the right direction”. That makes me think what you are talking about is more of a hybrid strategy because a standard Martingale system doubles down on losers – namely it’s increasing exposure as the market moves against you not the other way around. Therefore this sounds more like a reverse-martingale strategy.

Very interesting article but I still don’t understand what you mean by:

“The best way to deal with drawdown is to use a ratchet system. So as you make profits, you should incrementally increase your lots and drawdown limit.”

Could you explain what you are doing here? Looking at you table you are increasing the drawdown limit based on profits made previously, but you stop increasing the limit at the 7th run.

This ratchet approach basically means giving the system more capital to play with when (if) profits are made. So in the early runs the number of times the system will double down is less and hence the drawdown limit is lower. But with each profit this drawdown limit is incremented in proportion to the profits – so it will take more risk. I use this as a way of locking in profits so that the system is able to “play with money” that it makes so to speak. In the example the reason it stops at line 7 is just because in practice the drawdown occurs in steps (because of the doubling down). I would have to check the simulation in detail – but it would seem that it’s hit a step here and the profit needs to increase by more to take it to the next one.

Very good article, I read it many times and learned a lot. Thank you.

Currently I’m working on martingale trading system with implemented hedging function to limit drawdown.

My question would be how to chose currencies to trade Martingale? You suggested to stay away from trending markets. What indicators and setups could help identify most suitable pairs to trade?

You are welcome. To choose currencies I would firstly check the fundamentals: For example you wouldn’t want to risk trading currencies where there’s an expectation of widely diverging monetary policy. This was (is) the case with EURUSD. EURGBP and EURCHF were good candidates in the past but not at the moment for several reasons. EURCHF can’t really be considered fully floating because of central bank intervention while EURGBP has been trending for some time in part because of the reasons mentioned above. I’ve also used a ranging indicator as this can help identify the most productive periods, namely volatile but predominantly sideways price movement.

Hi Steve, how much balance you should have to run this strategy? 2k? 3k?

Balance is relative to your lot sizing. If you can find a broker that will do fractional sizing ( El Dec 01 at 3:36 pm.

Thanks for the wonderful explanation. I suspect my fund manager uses martingale. Can you tell by the looks of it?

Kindky see image:

Could’t tell a great deal from this image as it doesn’t show any returns.

Hi, intyeresting post.

Are you still running martingale on USD/EUR?

How it performed during 2015?

I’ve been testing a simple strategy based on martingale but during 2015 it’s been horrible!!

My strategy better performs with high leverage of 100 or even 200.

I didn’t run it on EUR/USD but yes I see it’s been a tough year using Martingale on this pair because of the massive swings.

It’s interesting about the leverage because usually I find the case is the opposite. Please feel free to elaborate on your strategy here or in the forum.

Thanks Steve. great article and website. I have a great affinity with many of the trading strategies described here. I particularly appreciate non-predictive systems which use strong money management. I build EAs and can probably build the martingale for you to share.

I’ve built one that has been running live for about a year and is currently up about 80% after I’ve taken 100% of my captial out. Martingale can work if you tame it. The link is here myfxbook/members/DailyGrind/dailygrindfx/1095746.

I’d be interested to work with others on a hedged martingale EA if anyone with some experience to contribute would like to work together. I’ll set up a forum topic to start the discussion.

Always good to hear new ideas:

I’ll pin the link here for anyone who’s interested in working on an EA for this system:

Hey FXGuy, I’d be interested in working together on a hedged martingale EA concept, if you’re still looking to team up.

I’ll check this post regularly, if see you (or anyone else interested) have responded, will leave my contact details.

Great post, Steve!

Thanks for your sharing..Did you try this strategy using an EA? If yes, how is the outcome?

Yes, it’s a proprietary trading advisor, though it doesn’t work on Metatrader. I will get it re-coded to work on MT shortly and make it available on the website. It works well within the parameters above – ie. as a skimmer, but not when over-leveraged. The Excel sheet is a pretty close comparison as far as performance.

I use the martingale system while setting a specific set of rules regarding pip difference at any given moment and a maximum allowable streak of consecutive losses.

Let me explain in detail:

Under normal conditions, the market works like a spring. The more pressure you apply in one way or another at any given moment, there more it wants to rebound in the opposite direction.

For my explanation, I would like to refer to what I call ‘stages’. By ‘stages’, I mean a 10 pip difference upwards (+1 stage) or downwards (-1 stage) from the set price.

For example, if a price is at 1.1840 on a set of currency, and the price moves to 1.1850, I define this as +1 stage. If it becomes 1.1830, I define it as -1 stage.

What I end up doing is choose a given high or low, and wait for it to either rise or fall by 40 pips (rise by 4 stages or fall by 4 stages), and then place a counter-trend order with a set-profit/stop loss of 1 stage in the opposite direction. If I gambled right, I earn. If not, the price keeps going the trend by another stage and I generally lose approximately 2-3x the potential earning due to the spread.

If I win, I just wait for the process to happen again, and place a new order. If I don’t, I double my next bet with a counter-direction stage immediately upon the loss of the 1st stage. In this case, the price has already gone up or down by 5 stages (50 pips), so chances it will at least ease off a bit of pressure by going 1 stage in the opposite direction are increased, and I have higher chances of doubling my original loss.

If I loose again, I double one more time (with even more increased chances I will win the next stage) by taking my first loss + my second loss, and doubling that. If I loose the 3rd stage, I lost a big amount, so I stop doubling there. In that scenario, the market is likely in a run-off one way or the other (generally due to some major event that might cause this to happen to a certain set of currency). I let that set of currency go while looking to re-do my work on another set of currency until the excitement ends (falls by at least a stage or two) on the one I let go.

When looking at a set of currency, I look for sudden rises or falls of 4 stages without ANY counter-direction stage movements in between. If there has been even 1 stage difference, I re-start the stage rise-fall count at 0.

As I said, 90% of the time, I win, and the combined earnings of stages 1, 2 or 3 above the original 4 stage movements generally outweigh the total amount lost over time from those that go over 3 (sudden rises or falls of 70 pips or more without any counter-movements are extremely rare)

I have been using this strategy for about 6 months now, and I am at a positive 35% earning since I began using it. Any thoughts?

Truly thanks Steve for your sharing! I find your sharing is the most precious after reading through many websites covering different aspects of FX.

what if u have a system that cant give u 5 consecutive draw down in a row and i have tested it. so why cant one use martingale strategy.

Thanks for your comment. Please explain a bit further so I can understand what you mean.