Trading: What is Martingale and Is It Reasonable to Use It?
Secondly, I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me that you will lose in the long run if for no other reason than that you are paying a spread for each trade. To make the probablility of loss equal to that of gain, you will have to use a single price to calculate the positions of your s/l and t/p, so that the s/l and t/p will be equidistant. You will either have to pay more for the stoploss than you would take in profit, or for equal loss and gain you will be more likely to hit the stoploss than the takeprofit. If I am wrong here, tell me!
I have seen Martingale system advertised for sale, but having written a simple EA to test the idea, decided not to involve myself in it. However, Paroli's system, the opposite of Martingale, is attractive, even though it, too, suffers from similar problems. There is no way you can make something unpredictable into something with a probability greater than 0.5. Trading MUST involve making judgements and using skill to predict; those unwilling to develop the skill will, I believe, fail. You simply have to make winning more probable than losing. If you can do than, perhaps Martingale may enhance your trading.
I have to say I am a complete beginner at EA programming and only have a little experience trading and that was mostly in options. Automated trading is a fascinating idea and I think I shall enjoy pursuing it.
Simply speaking without a high winrate martingale cannot work...
ES
Hi all, i am a physician involved in Forex as a hobby and playing around with EA builder. However, i have designed an automated trading system with winning rate (65-73%) but most of the won trades is small, while the losing ones are large( from 1 : 2 to 1:3). So, the end of this system is losing but with a very long periods and it could sustain for a period of time without losing the whole account. Simply this EA can survive in ranging to consolidating to moderate trending market conditions but not in a highly trending markets. I have designed an inversed form of this simple EA which can follow the trend very well but lose during the ranging markets. The number of trades on 5 minute charts (around 10/day) or 15 chart (around 7-8/day). I would appreciate your ideas to enhance its performance. Any ideas will be highly considered. Please dont hesitate to share with me your opinions whatever are.
Primarily here i am talking about the ranging EA, the one which could survive in the ranging markets and trying to avoid the aggressive trending conditions.
OK. now, i am thinking of ;
1- I am considering News filter indicators to avoid spike times.
2- using some other indicators to filter the entry and i have found some i could combine. So, i could cut down the number of trades from 10 to 2 or 3 on the 5 minute frame. But selecting only the highly probable ones.
3-considering Hedge or martingale during the highly trend periods.
4-considering using a logical stop loss to cut the nagative trades short without affecting the ones running to my side.
5-Considering using positive progressive betting system instead of martingale. This is based on the high number of my trades are Positive rather than negative.
That is all for now. Please if you have any idea i would appreciate to share it with me to solve this issue.
ESPECIALLY WITH THE BETTING SYSTEM TO CHOOSE AND HOW I COULD USE IT :).
email: mcgene2010atyahoo.com
Hatem
How to implement profitable martingale:
1 - start with low base lots (0.1 or less)
2 - high win rate.. at least 70%
3 - low consecutive losses (minimize z-score)
4 - semi-martingale.. rather then strictly doubling the number of lots.. allow this factor to be varied based on market/performance.. in my experience, doubling is a very aggressive approach
5 - equity stoploss.. force martingale to reset to minimum lots if a given equity drawdown is observed.. you will take a large hit, but still be in the green & in the game
..I have such a system trading on a live account.. due to the limitations above it is not hugely profitable but has been running for over a year with a constant return on capital
2
its funny the articles that are written on martingale. It is true that without an edge, even 0.50% above 50/50, you would lose over time (over a continuous series of repititions). This was also proven in an article detailing the gambler's fallacy (see follow up also here) . The good news is that the financial markets can only go so far in any particular direction before a pullback. You can use this fact alone to your advantage (edge). I think the largest single direction trend a market ever made was EURUSD 2000 pips without a pullback of at least 38.2%, There was another move of 3600 pips, but there were significant retracements in-between. Even better news is that martingale is not required to become profitable in the markets. There is a spreadsheet where you can work out the numbers yourself and see.
It works if the net profit factor is above 1 and the win rate is higher than 50%, martingale is a double or nothing either doubles your money or doubles your losses, so if you have a 60% win rate with 1:1 RR ratio you can use it safely, if not then dont.
Whats funny about forex that you dont start from 50% win rate from the start because the market is changing not a fix probability set like a roulette or blackjack game.So if you start it like a betting system you will have like 40% win rate with 1:1 RR if you take trades random, maybe on the 9999999999999999999999th trade you hit 49.9% but thats still not enough.So it is better to filter out crappy trades first and then increase your win rate to be martingale compatible! And this is the advantage of investing vs gambling, you can filter out bad trades, on the roulette or blackjack you cant filter out bad hands or spins unless you cheat, but surely not the statistical way!!
This is how my 60% win rate, real martingale system looks like, and how it should suppose to look like, on LEVEL 7 settings (2^7)
Here are my martingale type systems:
1) CLASSICAL MARTINGALE AFTER 567 TRADES (60% WR, 1:1 RR)
As you can see after 500 trades it barely hit LEVEL 7 and even if we would lost that we would lose only half of the profit and continue from there to grow it back!
Of course you need a big account for this like one that can support like 10 lot size trades to be only 1% account risk, but statistically its very improbable to blow your account since its only 1% risk versus huge potential gains...The martingale presented in this article is BS with like 40-45% win rate which is sadly not enough, not even 50% is, must be 51 or higher...
2) PROGRESSIVE DYNAMIC GROWTH MARTINGALE (60% WR, 1:1 RR)
3) PROGRESSIVE STATIC GROWTH MARTINGALE (60% WR, 1:1 RR)
4) ANTI MARTINGALE or INVERSE MARTINGALE (60% WR, 1:1 RR)
enjoy and good programming ;)
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New article What is Martingale and Is It Reasonable to Use It? has been published:
This article contains a detailed description of the Martingale system, as well as precise mathematical calculations, necessary for answering the question: "Is it reasonable to use Martingale?".
If you write "martingale" in a search engine box, it will return a large number of pages with the description of this system. It is interesting that among others you will meet web-sites of online casinos, which assure that this system works, all you need is entering your credit card number to start scooping up money. What is strange - are the casinos ready to give their money such easily? If the Martingale really works so good, then why have not all the casinos turned bankrupt yet?
So, what is Martingale? Here is the definition from Wikipedia:
- A game starts with a certain minimal bet;
- After each each loss the bet should be increased so, that the win would recover
all previous losses plus a small profit;
- In case of win a gambler returns to the minimal bet.
(Translated from Russian Wikipedia by MetaQuotes Software Corp.)More information is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_system
Author: Slobodov Gleb