Square-Root Decay

A balanced taper: size is 1/√(i+1), which decays slowly enough that rungs several levels down still carry meaningful weight. Among the decay curves this is the one that keeps a genuine averaging effect while still bounding the ladder cost tightly.

Size at level i is the reciprocal of the square root of (i+1). The decay is gradual, so the one-lot floor arrives later than in the geometric or exponential decay modes and more of the configured curve actually trades.

Below is the wizard's own ladder table and the trading terminal's chart engine, both driven by buildLadderPlan for this mode. Change the level count, spread or target and the rung prices, sizes, capital ramp and chart lines recompute exactly as they would in the grid designer.

Very light — a ten-level ladder costs a small multiple of the base lot. That leaves budget for either depth or a larger base lot, and both are legitimate uses.

Read the cost vs 5 levels column as the escalation test. A flat ladder doubles when the depth doubles; anything materially above that is a curve whose coverage has to be bought rather than simply configured.

With every rung filled, the volume-weighted average entry is 95.27 against a base of 100 and a deepest rung of 90.00 — so the average sits 47% of the way down the covered range. Getting back to flat from the bottom therefore needs a 5.85% bounce, against 5.00% for a flat ladder of the same depth — 0.85% more work.

A balanced taper: decays more slowly than the linear-inverse mode, so a few levels down still carries meaningful size before the floor takes over.

The last row is the metric that separates modes. Profit for a full cycle is the target percentage of deployed capital in every mode, so it cannot discriminate. What differs is how much capital has to sit reserved to earn one shallow cycle: this mode reserves 4.32× base to collect 16.4 bps of it when the first rung completes.

Mild trends and uncertain regimes. If you cannot decide whether the instrument is ranging or trending, this curve is the least wrong answer: it participates on retraces without funding a trend.

Shrinks with the inverse square root, decaying slower than the linear-inverse mode — a balanced anti-martingale that still commits meaningful size a few levels down. Floored at 1 lot.

Low capital risk, moderate recovery risk. Because the taper is gentle the average entry does move, just less than a growth curve would move it.

This is the product's grid backtester, not a summary of one. It fetches public candles for the instrument you pick, rebuilds the ladder anchored on the first candle of the window, then applies the engine's own fill, take-profit, refill and stop-loss rules bar by bar. The caveat block inside the panel is part of the output — read it before trusting a number.

First the arithmetic, then the market. The table below is computed from the size curves alone; the sweep underneath replays every one of those ladders over the same real candle window, with grid_mode as the only variable.

• Mild trends, or regimes you have not classified yet.
• Moderate capital protection without giving up all averaging.
• A first deployment on an instrument you suspect trends.

• Violent mean reversion — a growth curve exploits that far better.
• You need the deepest rungs to carry real size.

• Because the ladder is cheap, raise the base lot rather than the level count if you want more participation per rung.
• Compare against fixed in the sweep below: if fixed wins on the instrument's recent history, the regime is probably ranging.

• Watch how quickly executed size hits the one-lot floor — beyond that point extra levels add coverage but almost no averaging.
• Track realised cycles per day. Decay curves earn from frequency, so a falling cycle count is the signal that the market has left the window.
• Check the gap between average entry and mark. Decay curves keep it wide by design, so recovery expectations must be set from it, not from hope.

1. 1
   Regime misread

   Chosen for trend protection on an instrument that is actually ranging, it under-participates in exactly the moves it should have harvested.
2. 2
   Floor flattening

   On a small base lot the deep rungs still reach the minimum size, which erases the taper. Check the plan table.

• Spread sets how fast the ladder consumes depth. Widening it buys coverage for the same level count at the cost of fewer fills.
• Target sets what each cycle books. Below round-trip fees plus slippage, a grid is a fee generator regardless of the size curve.
• The stop loss is the only bound on the tail. Without it, the curve's worst case is whatever the market does, not what you planned.

1. 1
   Why is this the recommended decay curve?

   Because it is the one where the configured ladder and the traded ladder are closest to each other, so what you plan is what runs.

• Sizes and capital: levelMultiplier / gridModeCurve in lib/grid/gridModes.ts, mirrored from grid_modes.hpp and the Python engine's lot calculator.
• Rung and exit prices, capital ramp, init targets and the stop line: buildLadderPlan — the same builder the wizard and grid designer use.
• Backtest fills, cycles and P&L: runBacktest / runBacktestSweep over public broker candles, applying the engine's fill, exit, refill and stop rules.
• Price charts: the trading terminal's chart engine, with the ladder drawn through its own price-line API.

• 1.Grid Modes — Overview — The full taxonomy and how to choose
• 2.Anti-Martingale family — What every curve in this family has in common
• 3.Capital Allocation — Sizing an account to a Square-Root Decay ladder
• 4.Stop Loss — Bounding this curve's tail
• 5.Reading the Ladder Plan — Verifying the curve before deploying
• 6.Grid Structure — Levels, init batch and base size