Effects of not keeping a Stop Loss

RKKARNANI:

You have posted about a simple martigale.

I use complex martingales )

PS: I dont advise people to use martingales....

I agree, I myself dont know much about it, rather know as I have posted and I do know that the info is not enough to use it.
Shall be posting more on it , but the more I read about it I understand why u said you need Steel Ballls to trade the system!!!! and why u needed to upgared to Titanium!!!!

A stop loss as CV said, depends upon the strategy used.
Considering the fact that more than 70% of the fund managers have under performed the S&P index this year, and about 57% of the fund manager under perform the S&P on an average, buy-and-hold would put a person's portfolio return higher than these funds. Why would anyone use a stop loss for a buy-and-hold indexing strategy, which is still one of the best strategies around? Note that we are talking about fund managers and not retail traders.

What I feel is for me, what works, I stress on " for me " is money management.

I am frequently, make that very often wrong about markets in daytrading.

For position trading, my hit ratio is a little bit better, but I dont have much patience to do position trading. Trying to improve that aspect....and have increased my level of position trading.

Martingale!!!!!

Imagine a trading strategy that is practically 100% profitable - would you be interested?
Most traders will probably reply with a resounding "Yes", especially since such a strategy does exist and dates all the way back to the eighteenth 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 and 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 in order to achieve 100% profitability, you need to have very deep pockets - in some cases, they must be infinitely deep.

Unfortunately, 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 Martingale Strategy?
Popularized in the eighteenth century, the martingale was introduced by a French mathematician by the name of Paul Pierre Levy. The martingale was originally a type of betting style that was based on the premise of "doubling down". Interestingly enough, a lot of the work done on the martingale was by an American mathematician named Joseph Leo Doob, who sought to disprove the possibility of a 100% profitable betting strategy.
The mechanics of the system naturally 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 introduction of the 0 and 00 on the roulette wheel was used to break the mechanics of the martingale by giving the game more than two possible outcomes other than the odd vs. even or red vs. 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 take a look at a simple example. Suppose that we had a coin and engaged in a betting game of either head or tails with a starting wager of $1. There is an equal probability that the coin will land on a head 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.


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 for a very long time if you are caught in the wrong direction. However, the key with martingale when applied to trading is that by "doubling down" you in essentially lower your average entry price. In the example below, at two lots, you need the EUR/USD to rally from 1.2630 to 1.2640 to break even. As the price moves lower and you add four lots, you only need it to rally to 1.2625 instead of 1.2640 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 1.2550, 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 1.2550. 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.

Minding the Risk

As attractive as the martingale strategy may sound to some traders, we stress that grave caution is needed for those who attempt to practice this style of trading. The main problem with this strategy is that oftentimes, that sure-fire trade 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.

Without SL orders how could one enter the Longs above today's previuos High's of CESC Fut ,Colgate Fut ,ONGC Fut ,Sun TV Fut,M&M Fut , SCI Fut,Bharat Forge Fut.

The stop loss I guess is deep rooted in the strategy which you adopted while placing orders. As CV said earlier, it depends upon one's strategy whether to use a stop or not.

Ajay,

Very difficult to out wit you. ( This time got you )

Asish

Hi all,

Trading with martingale is most stupid kinda thing, i know few hundered fx traders attempted it and went bankrupt, some consistent loosers always makes my job easy

Exactly, Amarnath: people who use simple martingales are suckers.

What u need are complex martingales.......

Something out of reach of most ordinary martingale users

And yes, a simple martingale will make a daytrader bankrupt in 10 trading days at most, in 3 days at the least

So, moral of story.........dont trade simple martingales.