How much money would you need to Martingale your way to profits?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by 1a2b3cppp, Feb 24, 2011.

  1. sjfan

    sjfan

    This has been pointed out to you by many posters, including myself. You've rejected every technical treatment of the subject and started as an a priori assumption that 'with proper position sizing it's impossible to blow up.' It has been pointed out that so long as your wealth and life span is finite, this is not true even if the stock market is well behaved. In fact, analysis of martingale systems explicitly shows that this is true.

    Yet, you start hang on to your misconceptions.

     
    #141     Feb 27, 2011
  2. Martingale (or, let's call it "averaging down" since I guess technically I'm not "martingaling") systems won't blow up with proper entry points. How is this not clear?

    If you're averaging down on a tight range, then yes, you'll blow your account once price goes one tick too far. Lots of noobs do this. I've done it in demo accounts. I never said this wasn't possible, in fact, I said that it was possible, and I'm saying again, yes, it's possible, and yes, you're right, on those crazy 3, 4, 5 sigma days, yes, you will blow your account.
     
    #142     Feb 27, 2011
  3. sjfan

    sjfan

    You keep saying this - despite it's been shown to you for not being true; So long as the entries are fair (otherwise, your entries have 'edge', which you keep saying you don't), you will blow up any account with some probability assuming you don't have infinite account size. This is a fairly standard result in probabilities theory. It's been linked to you and explained to you.

    Yet, you keep going back to your a priori assumption that such systems "won't blow up".

    So you either believe you have some edge (ie, you have better than random entry points; you believe the market will go up under some time frame), or you keep insisting on something that is simply not true.

    There lies everyone's frustration.

     
    #143     Feb 27, 2011
  4. MAESTRO

    MAESTRO

    OK, I'll help you. I have actually done the calculations once (just for fun). If you do what you have suggested with 2 STD OTM long options you have a shot there. The non-linearity of the payoffs are potentially suitable for the exponential averaging. However, it only works when the theta is not too harsh on you.
     
    #144     Feb 27, 2011
  5. Again, if you do it in too narrow of a range, then yes, you'll blow your account. I'm not disagreeing with that. In other words, if you're doing this on SPY and you make your last entry when SPY hits 100, then you're probably going to eventually run out of money before you make any money. Or if you're doing it on the ES with a $10k account and you're buying more contracts every 5 or 10 points against you, then yes, you're going to eventually blow your account.


    Sounds interesting. I don't know anything about options, tho. What is theta?
     
    #145     Feb 27, 2011
  6. CrazyBoy

    CrazyBoy

    Depends upon how good/shit you are at determining correct entry points.
     
    #146     Feb 27, 2011
  7. Assume I am "shit" at them and buy after every X point/dollar decrease in price.
     
    #147     Feb 27, 2011
  8. sjfan

    sjfan

    None of the analysis shown to you require any particular time frame. It's true of all time frames.

     
    #148     Feb 27, 2011
  9. By "range" I meant price range, not time range.
     
    #149     Feb 27, 2011
  10. I just noticed this in your opening post. Good decision...

     
    #150     Feb 27, 2011