martingale profitable or not ??????

i always hear that martingale money management syle is very2 risky, is it true ? anyone here making money in long run with martingale syle ?????

Traderz, the Martingale is guaranteed to be 100% profitable until you reach a situation where the "death trade" occurs. The latter refers to a situation where you're forced to increase your position size to the point that a loss on that trade wipes out your entire account. The probability of the death trade occurring depends on how big a position size you start with relative to your account size, and how accurately you time your entries and exits.

For a system to be profitable, it needs to deliver positive expectancy, and that is determined solely by your entries and exits. Mathematically, position size has no bearing on expectancy. In other words, in the long term, it's impossible (at least according to math theory) to money manage a losing system into a winning one. Attached to this post http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=1861870 is an XLS-based calculator that allows you to experiment with different bettting systems and ultimately prove to yourself that no matter how you vary bet size, it has no bearing on the long term result. That assumes that the probability of a win associated with each trial is equal. In a trading context, it either comes back to (i) entries and exits, or (ii) establishing a way of determining whether the probability of success of the upcoming trade is greater or less than "normal", depending on the outcome of immediately prior trades. An increase in position size can be justified mathematically only if/when the probability of a win is greater than normal.

At least the above is my humble opinion. It is based around gambling theory, which is hard to dispute mathematically. However, one might disagree with me, and argue that trading is not a precise science, and therefore operates differently. In the link above, there are some interesting ideas from Nanningbob and others, as to how they trade using a Martingale method. In post #232 of that thread, Nanningbob also explains how he reduces the probability of the death trade. Read the arguments for and against the Martingale, and decide for yourself.

Also, do a search on the forum here for "Martingale" and you'll find that this is a topic that's been discussed several times.

For more info, try here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marting...ting_system%29

Good luck,
David

RIGHT NOW running the martingale is financial suicide. give the markets a month or two to calm down. The most recent runs on even the eurusd with no significant retracement will kill that system.. hanover referred to it as a death trade ,,, ya

95% of the time it is a VERY profitable system,, all of the fundi rumors, and eco uncertianty are causing the market to move in such a way where you could very easily run into the "death trade" a couple times a week.

Oh,, and forget about it unless your running an account with more than 100K in it. You wont have the margin to run enough levels out.

It has been tried so many times on so many forums that you would think if it worked somebody would be making a killing by now & we would all know about it, but to my knowledge, nobody is.