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Anyone here tried using a martingale strategy at all?! I've been testing one for months and have been doing great. (Of course, you need deep pockets to do this, I typically start with a .01 lot position for every $1000 in my account...and it is advisable to diversify across multiple currency pairs whenever possible).

this is a doble edge sword.

This 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

Yeah, Martingale is great if you want to blow up

Too risky. You will learn NOTHING and blow up without knowing exactly WHY.

Carry on "testing" johnedward - on a demo.

On a real account you will carry on feeling really good - right up until a day when you will be feeling really bad!

I want to tell you about a system that has produced 490 pips in the past month, with no draw-down. The reason I am showing this to you is because I would like any input as to if/why this system would not work, or to solicit your input as to how to make it better.

Here are the rules:

Any currency
Enter long .01 at 2200 GMT (this first trade on a demo account)
Enter short .01 at 2200 GMT (this first trade on a demo account)

Next day at 2200 GMT:
Enter long .02 at 2200 GMT (assuming yesterday's long won)
Enter short .01 at 2200 GMT (assuming yesterday's short lost)

Both take profit and stop loss is 30 pips.

Double on winning trade only until net positive. Once net positive, the very next trade at 2200 GMT will be on demo account at .01 lots for both long and short. Since we know this trade will be neutral (one loss, one win) there is no reason to trade it on a live account. Only trade it on a demo trade to discover which side to double on the next day on the live account.

The impetus for this system came from Jimbo's thread, which uses a Martingale approach to this, and can be found here: here

The problem I found with this original system, as with any Martingale system, is the large drawdown. This drawdown was somewhat mitigated by the fact that there was always a win associated with every trade, but the increasing lots on the losing side produced large drawdowns.

Therefore I decided (based upon input from others in that thread) to test this system using an anti-martingale strategy instead (adding to winners instead of to losers). I am attaching the results which show a 490 pip increase with no drawdown.

I can also email you Jimbo's original results which are in a Microsoft Excel sheet if you PM me your email address. We cannot post Excel files in this forum or I would just post them here. (Please give me a day or so to get back with you if asking for the file.)

I do not know how to work with Excel to make my results appear in a spreadsheet. If anyone does, I would appreciate a copy of the spreadsheet with instructions on how to record these trades into the spreadsheet, so that we might do further testing.

So, please examine the attached (my results), ask for Jimbo's original file, and then provide any comments that you might have.

P.S. I do not know which currency Jimbo used initially for these results, so please do not ask.

Martingale does work only if you calculate some things. Go over the past history of all those years of forex and calculate the biggest correction of price. I can tell you that the biggest correction was the sixth may 2011 and it was about 12.5%.

If you know this then you can figure out yourself that there will be a bigger correction in the future. Keep that in mind!!! The correction before the 12.5% was 8% so it is almost impossible to keep covering something you can't predict.

My suggestion is: if you will use martingale be aware that you need a full backup of your account!!! If you have a account of $50000 then thread it like it is $25000. That way you can recover a very big correction because after such price drop there is always a big correction to the other side.

Martingale does work if you know what to do and if you are smart enough you can use hedgingstrategies together with martingale but that's only possible when you have enough money to play with.

I determined it was much better just to take a small loss than to risk a lot of money just for a BE.

A hedge can also turn in the wrong direction and then things are compounding in the wrong direction even faster.