The Anti Martingale System – Profit From “Martingale in Reverse”

Anti martingale, as trend following system © forexop

However, there is an alternative. The anti Martingale system does what many traders think is more logical. “Martingale in reverse” hangs on to winning trades, and drops losers. If that sounds better, read on.

“Doubling-Up” On Winners

The standard Martingale system closes winners and doubles exposure on losing trades. If you’re not familiar with this strategy, see this other article here on Forexop. While it has some highly desirable properties, the downside with it is that it can cause losses to run up exponentially.

The reverse Martingale, as I’m going to describe now does the exact opposite. It closes losing trades, and doubles winners. The idea being to cut losses quickly and let profits run.

Anti Martingale is an effective trend following strategy. Unlike forward Martingale it doesn’t have “fat tail” risks.

Example

Take the following example in Table 1. This shows how a “double up” sequence works in practice. I’ve set a virtual take profit, and stop loss target of 20 pips. The price starts at 1.3500. I start by placing a buy to open order. The price then moves up 20 pips to 1.3520. Following the strategy, I now double the size of my position. I add 1 lot at the new rate of 1.3520.

Table 1: A “Double up” trade sequence.

This gives me an average entry price of 1.3510. I continue doubling-up the exposure for each 20 pip increment (my definition of a winning trade).

At tick 6, the price then drops by 20 pips. Following the reverse strategy, I now have to close the last position. Since it is a loser (according to my criteria). So I place a sell to close order at tick 6. The effect of this is to half my position size, or exposure. I now hold 8 lots instead of 16.

I’ve also realized a loss of -$16 on the losing trade. My net balance is now -$2. The table below shows how the overall balance is made up. At tick 6, the P&L of each of the positions is as follows:

Table 2: Snapshot of trade P&L on closing first position.

One losing trade cancels the profit

Notice that the last losing trade wiped out all of the profit on the existing open trades, and left me with a net loss of -$2. The net loss of the entire sequence is equal to my stop loss value. This relationship always holds.

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The total profit of the group has been canceled out by the last move of just 20 pips. At this point in time there are still four open positions remaining. The first three are in profit and the last is at break even.

The question is then what to do with these left over positions.

Standard reversal approach

At this point, some traders consider that the trend has reversed. So they cash in the profit on the remaining trades before further losses occur. This is what you’d do if you’re mirroring a pure Martingale strategy.

Hybrid approach

Other traders prefer to hold the existing positions and wait. You could do this for example if you have other indicators that suggest the original trend might return. This is a hybrid strategy: In a pure reversal system, the trades in the entire sequence would all be closed at this point.

To see the whole process in action, you can use the Excel sheet which demonstrates the anti Martingale strategy:

The spreadsheet lets you to try-out various setups and market conditions. You can test the above variations in the algorithm by setting the “lose multiplier” parameter.

Like the original Martingale, the take profit and stop losses are “virtual”, in that they only define winning and losing trades. And so when to increase or reduce exposure.

As with grid trading, you would typically also set a profit target for the “entire system”. Say for example after N “double up” legs or when the entire system of open positions reaches a certain profit amount.

Doubling Up Can Work Against You

As shown above, the lot-doubling, which marks the Martingale approach, can work against you too. With the reverse-Martingale, the averaging up rather than down means your profits can be turned very quickly into loses should the market turn against you.

On the plus side, your loss from a single sequence is limited to your stop loss on your starting lot amount. So say your stop loss is 40 pips, and your starting lot size is 1 micro lot, your biggest loss from a single sequence would be: 40 pips x 1 micro lot. That’s about $4 – depending on the currencies you’re trading.

Just as standard Martingale recovers losses on one winning trade. Anti-Martingale does the exact opposite. One losing trade in a double-up progression eliminates the profit of the entire position.

This can be seen in action in Tables 1 and 2. The “hitting of stops” can be a significant problem when the price action is especially volatile.

The Strategy is Risk Balanced

Both Martingale and anti Martingale have equal risk verses reward. That is, they are risk-reward balanced. So say your success in picking trades is no better than chance. This means the system has a 1:1 risk-reward ratio and a net expected return of zero.

The analysis is just the reverse of the Martingale. Every losing trade is closed at its stop loss. And there’s an equal probability of picking winning verses losing trades. So the expected loss from the losers is:

E ≈ -½ N x B

Where N is the total number of trades, and B is the fixed amount of loss on each trade. In the anti Martingale, let’s say I close the system and take profit after 8 winners in a row. That is, after doubling-up 7 times.

The probability of 8 winners in a row is (1/2)⁸. That means I’d expect this to happen after 2⁸, or after 256 trades.

So after 256 trades:

• Expected loss from the losers: (½) x 256 x 1 = -128
• The expected profit from the one winning sequence: 2⁷ x 1 = 128
• Final expected net return: 0

This is because in this setup all other combinations, other than 8 winners in a row results in a loss. The same is true whichever number you choose.

In practice of course, your expected net return, and risk-reward will be slightly less than zero because of spreads and other fees. That’s assuming your trade selection is no better than chance. Of course, the aim is that trade selection is better than a coin flip.

Avoid Those Scary Drawdowns

The standard Martingale system blindly doubles down on consecutive losing trades. Without proper controls this can take the trader into deep drawdown with disastrous results.

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The profit-loss pattern of anti Martingale is the opposite of this. Typically, in this strategy you see frequent small losses, and a few one off big wins. You rarely see the scary drawdowns that you get with Martingale. This can be seen by comparing the two return charts. Notice how much smoother the returns in the reverse strategy are.

The reason being that loss exposure is cut rapidly, and doesn’t escalate at an exponential rate. The “saw tooth” appearance of Figure 5 shows these “rare but catastrophic” losses.

You will still see losses in the reverse system, but these are more contained. What is the downside with it? The downside is that you also won’t get the smooth steady returns that are possible with Martingale.

Choosing an Entry Signal

In the spreadsheet I’ve used the first derivative of the 15 day moving average line. This is a very basic indicator and simply tells me if there’s a trend, and in which direction.

With anti-martingale, the indicator should “say” when there’s a high probability of an existing trend, or the start of a new trend.

The following technical indicators can be useful in deciding your entry signal:

• Moving average lines, and convergences (more)
• Volatility “squeezes”
• Break through of key support/resistance levels
• Structural chart patterns
• Momentum indicators
• ADX/Elliott Waves

These are just a few examples. For more on this and on choosing a market see here. Some of these are more subjective in interpretation and are difficult to automate. However the stronger the combined trend signal you have, the higher the chances of a profitable trade sequence.

Warning Beware of relying on technical indicators on their own. Ideally, if you’re trading manually or creating an expert advisor, you should incorporate a fundamental viewpoint as well.

This is harder to do if you’re using automation.

To see the potential for false signals, see the spreadsheet and take a look at the chart. Press F9 a few times to run the calculations. You’ll notice common technical patterns appear in there time and again. Namely trends, tops, bottoms, head and shoulder patterns. Even Fibonacci levels and supports and resistances appear to be there. Without other input these kinds of patterns can lead to false signals.

Results

Short term performance can be misleading with any trading system. To analyze the long-term behavior, I ran the simulation 1,000 times in each set using a random pricing model. Each set simulates different market characteristics using the trend “drift” parameter in the spreadsheet:

• Flat market (trend parameter=0)
• Bullish market (trend parameter=0.1)
• Bearish market (trend parameter=-0.1)

An average spread of 4 pips was also used. The results are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3: Anti-Martingale – Summary of long-term performance.

The important thing to take away from this is the marked performance differences. Anti Martingale doesn’t do well in flat markets. See the huge difference in the mean returns. In fact, it does far worse than random. This highlights the importance of choosing the right strategy for the right market.

Figure 1: An example profit history chart using the Martingale system in reverse. © forexop

Figure 1 shows a typical profit pattern from a single run. Compare this to Martingale, in which the drawdowns are frequent and severe. Click here to open image in new window.

Figure 2: This chart highlights the radically different return patterns for differing market conditions. © forexop

The figure above shows the frequency distribution of each of the different market conditions. Notice how the distribution of returns for “trending” is shifted to the right. This represents the higher returns.

The following Excel spreadsheet will allow you to test the strategy yourself and try out different scenarios.

You can configure different volatility and trending conditions, then see first-hand how the algorithm behaves.

Anti Martingale is Better In Trending Markets

There’s no point running both Martingale and Anti-Martingale at the same time, in the same market and with the same setup. The strategies are opposites, and suited to different situations.

While standard Martingale works well in flat, range bound markets, anti Martingale is better suited to volatile, trending markets. That’s not so say it won’t work sometimes in flat or trendless conditions. It’s just the idea behind it is to escalate the exposure on a rising or falling market. This is where most of the big profits are made.

The “preference” for trends makes the reverse algorithm better suited to trading volatile pairs or for positive “carry” opportunities.

Comparisons

Table 4 below shows the long term performance characteristics of both algorithms. The data is based on 1,000 runs of both algorithms under different market conditions: flat, bullish, and bearish. Each run can execute up to 200 trades. This sample data therefore consists of 1.2 million data points (1000 x 6 x 200).

In all cases, the trials execute trades in multiples of 1 lot. The return for each trial is measured as the return in pips per lot traded (total pips/lots traded).

Table 4: Performance comparison Anti-Martingale vs. Martingale.

Figure 3 below shows the return distributions of both strategies. As can be seen, the distribution of Martingale is highly peaked with a double “fat tail”. The most negative of which is well “off the chart”. The worst case run returned a massive loss of -772 pips/lot – shown in Table 3 above.

Figure 3: Comparison of the two systems - return distributions for Martingale vs. Anti Martingale. © forexop

The long term averages, as shown in Table 4, highlight the variability of performance, depending on market conditions. Anti Martingale gives a much stronger mean return in a rising/falling market.

However, this is exactly where the conventional strategy suffers. Mostly due to “doubling down” against prevailing trends. Whether the trend is bullish or bearish doesn’t have a significant impact in the outcome. The heavy tail results in a very large kurtosis.

Figure 4: Long term performance chart - Anti Martingale. © forexop

The figure above shows the long-term cumulative gains in pips for Anti Martingale. The return graph is significantly smoother than the standard Martingale returns below.

In Figure 5, you can see the returns from Martingale show a characteristic “saw tooth”. These demonstrate the big “one off” losses that happen in the “classic algorithm”.

Figure 5: Long term performance chart - standard Martingale. © forexop

Anti-Martingale: Considerations

The “Bottom Line”

• The reverse strategy is better suited to volatile, trending markets. However, Martingale gives better results in flat, predominantly trend-less markets.
• Both strategies yield an expected long term return of zero. Therefore, choice of suitable currency pair, market conditions and entry signal are critical to success with either strategy (see return charts).
• Standard Martingale is characterized by steady, positive returns, and “one off” big losses. These appear as “fat tails“ in the return distribution (see comparison return graphs). These lead to highly variable outcomes in the long run.
• The return distribution of Anti Martingale is significantly flatter, with lower variance as overall returns are more “clustered around the mean”.
• Optimal long term returns can be achieved by “flipping” between the two strategies according to the market conditions. This can be automated if you’re using and Expert Advisor.

Why Use It

• It decreases exposure on losses, and increases it on profits. Most traders believe that makes more sense than doing the opposite.
• Like Martingale, it has an outcome and risk-reward that can be statistically estimated.
• It’s well suited to algorithmic trading.
• It doesn’t encounter exponentially increasing losses – provided stops and take profits are correctly executed.
• Using the forward system it’s difficult to profit from trends. Even when a strong trend is detected, the upside is limited to a linear progression.

Why Avoid It

• The doubling up of position sizes can work against you. If your biggest trade loses, it wipes out the gains for the entire sequence.
• The big lot size multiples means there’s a risk of heavy losses if your stops are overrun. This can happen if the market gaps and falls through your stop levels.
• Execution problems with your broker can also cause stops to fail or to execute at levels that make the outcome unprofitable. However this is a problem most algorithmic strategies are prone to.

For more information on Martingale see the eBook.