Martingale
and Grid EAs
Grid and martingale robots win small and often, then lose once and completely. The mechanics are simple, published nowhere, and decide the outcome.
Updated:
Key takeaways
- A grid opens orders at fixed distances. Martingale raises the size after every loss.
- Both keep the equity curve smooth until one trend runs against the whole open grid.
- Dot Trading used grid and martingale. It lost 100% of a $2,000 account in six weeks.
- A high win rate proves nothing here: losers stay open until the account cannot hold them.
- Check maximum open lots and the distance between levels before you look at the returns.
What Is a Grid,
and What Is Martingale?
Two separate rules, sold as one idea: where to add orders, and how large.
These are two separate rules. Vendors combine them so often that traders treat them as one idea.
A grid decides where to add orders. Martingale decides how large each new order is.
Neither rule predicts direction. Both assume the price will come back to where it started.
Grid: adding by distance
- Opens the first position, then waits for the price to move against it.
- Adds another position every fixed distance, often 20 or 30 pips.
- Closes the whole set together once the average price turns profitable.
- Has no stop loss on individual orders, because the recovery needs them open.
Martingale: adding by size
- Raises the size of each new order after a loss, commonly doubling it.
- Needs one winner to cover every loss that came before it.
- Grows the required margin geometrically, while the account grows linearly.
- Reaches a size the balance cannot support after a run of six or seven losses.
Together they produce a system that wins small, often, and loses once, completely.
The maths is not hidden or complicated. It simply does not appear on the sales page.
Why Does the Curve
Look Perfect?
Closed profit against open loss, and the difference between balance and equity.
A grid robot closes winners and holds losers. That single habit makes the curve look extraordinary.
Balance counts only closed trades. Equity counts open ones too. The gap between them is the risk.
Ask for the equity curve. If a seller offers only balance, the question has been answered.
Why the line looks clean
- Closed profit rises every time a small basket is taken.
- Open loss grows quietly, because nothing is ever cut.
- The balance line stays smooth while the equity line falls.
- Most published screenshots show balance, not equity.
Win rate is affected the same way. A grid can report 90% winners while holding one catastrophic basket.
The number is true and useless. It counts how often the robot took profit, not how much it risked to take it.
This is why our scoring weighs the deepest fall above total return. The drawdown guide sets out how we read it.
A backtest hides this even better than a live account. The curve ends before the losing basket arrives.
What Happened to
a $2,000 Account
Our own funded test of a grid robot with martingale sizing, week by week.
We funded a $2,000 account and ran Dot Trading on its recommended settings.
The strategy was a grid with martingale sizing. It took six weeks to reach zero.
Nothing unusual happened in the market during those weeks. Volatility was ordinary, and no crisis hit.
What we measured
- 6-Week Return: -100%
- Max Drawdown: -100%
- Avg Monthly: N/A
- Win Rate: 24%
How the account went to zero
- The first weeks looked ordinary. Small baskets closed in profit, and the balance rose.
- A single directional move stopped the price returning to the grid average.
- The robot kept adding, each order larger than the one before it.
- Margin ran out before the price turned. The broker closed the positions.
- Support stopped answering. The vendor website disappeared shortly afterwards.
A 24% win rate is the detail worth holding onto. The robot lost more trades than it won.
Grid systems usually report the opposite. This one had already stopped recovering before the end.
The full sequence, with dates and screenshots, sits in the Dot Trading test report.
What to Measure
Instead of Win Rate
Five questions with numeric answers, and the conditions that make a grid defensible.
Five questions replace the win rate. Each one has a number for an answer, and each answer is checkable.
Ask for numbers
- What is the maximum number of open orders the robot will allow?
- What is the largest single lot size it can reach from the starting size?
- How far can the price travel before margin runs out on your balance?
- Does the robot have a hard stop for the whole basket, in money?
- What happened in the worst month of the published record, in equity terms?
The fourth question matters most. A grid without a basket stop has no floor except your margin call.
Work the third question out yourself. The margin calculator shows what your balance holds at a given size.
When a grid is defensible
- A hard basket stop in currency, set before the robot starts.
- A size multiplier of one, which means no martingale at all.
- A capped number of grid levels that your margin covers with room to spare.
- A market chosen for range behaviour, not for trend behaviour.
Under those four conditions a grid becomes an ordinary strategy with an ordinary loss limit.
It also stops producing the smooth curve that sold it. That trade is the whole point.
Our full audit framework for robots sits in analyzing EA risks.
No position sizing rule turns a losing strategy into a winning one. It only changes how fast you find out.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a martingale EA?
A robot that increases position size after a loss, usually by doubling it. One winner then covers the whole losing run.
How is a grid EA different from martingale?
A grid decides where to add orders, at fixed distances. Martingale decides how large each new order is. Most products use both.
Why do grid robots show such high win rates?
They close winners and hold losers. The win rate counts how often profit was taken, not how much was risked to take it.
Can grid trading ever be safe?
It can be made ordinary. That needs a hard basket stop in money, no size multiplier, and a capped number of levels.
Did a martingale robot really lose your whole account?
Yes. Dot Trading took a $2,000 funded account to zero in six weeks on its recommended settings.
Continue Your Risk Architecture
Dot Trading Test Report
The full account record: grid mechanics, the losing basket, and the vendor going silent.
EA Drawdown Explained
Why the deepest fall outranks total return, and how long recovery actually takes.
What Is a Forex EA?
What the code controls, what it cannot, and what seven funded tests returned.
Position Sizing Playbook
Risk per trade and volatility sizing, the arithmetic a grid robot ignores.
Robot Rankings
Seven funded tests scored on drawdown first, with the weighting published.