Grid Trading
A strategy that opens positions at preset price levels, adding to losers as price moves against you. Banned by most prop firms.
Definition
Grid trading is a strategy that places a sequence of entries at regular price intervals, typically averaging into a position as price moves against the trader. A common grid on EUR/USD might enter long at 1.0850, add at 1.0830, add at 1.0810, add at 1.0790 — doubling or tripling size at each level. The strategy profits when price reverses back through the entries, distributing the average cost basis lower (or higher for short grids). Grid strategies are related to martingale: both involve adding to losing positions, and both have catastrophic failure modes when price trends strongly against the grid direction. Most prop firms ban grids explicitly in their EA-restriction language.
Example
Why It Matters
Grid trading is detected the same way martingale is — firms flag trade sequences with size progression following a losing-then-add pattern. Many traders believe their strategy is 'not quite a grid' because the size progression is not strict doubling, but firm detection systems do not require strict doubling; they flag any repeated pattern of adding to losers in regular price increments. Traders adding manually to losing positions at fixed distances are caught by the same rule as automated grids.