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♾️Perpetuals

Trade a variety of perp markets with low-latency speeds.

Perpetuals Overview

Perpetuals (perps) are derivative contracts on an underlying spot asset.

Traders can go long or short the contract with leverage using their portfolio as a margin.

Perps have no expiry. Instead, a funding rate exists to bring the price of a perp closer to parity with the spot price.

PnL for the perp position is paid out in the exchange's quote currency.

This tutorial will cover the basics of opening, managing, and closing perp positions. To learn more about perps and their please refer to the following:

Given their nature, perps can amplify profits and losses and should only be used by users familiar with how they work.

Opening a Perpetual Position

-> Hover on Trade in the navigation menu (click on it for mobile).

-> Select the Perp market you want to trade in the drop-down. You can change markets once on the trading page also.

-> Set your Trade Leverage (see details below).

-> Decide if you want to Buy/Long or Sell/Short the perp.

-> Decide your order type.

  • Market: The trade will be executed immediately at the best market price.

  • Limit: The order will be filled only at the price you set or better .

  • Stop-Market: See the Stop-Market Tutorial.

-> Enter the size of trade you want to take.

-> Or use the slider which will enter a % of your max trade size.

-> You can review the trade order summary.

-> Click on the Buy or Sell button to place the order. You will need to sign the transaction if you do not have One-Click Trading enabled.

If the trade is executed, you will see your perpetual position in the Positions tables on the Trading and Portfolio pages.

Trade Leverage

Trade leverage lets you set a max leverage for the trade you are about to enter.

This is based on your Available Funds (or Available Margin).

For example:

  • Joe has $1,000 of Available Funds.

  • Joe sets his max trade leverage to 10x.

  • The max trade size Joe can enter will be $1,000 x 10 = $10,000 notional.

Trade leverage is a tool to manage risk and set max order sizes on a per-trade basis.

It is NOT the same as Account Leverage.


Closing a Perpetual Position

Traders have two options when it comes to closing perp positions.

  1. Manually: Traders can buy or sell the perp contract to reduce the position. For example, if Joe is long 100 ETH-PERP, then Joe can enter an order to sell 100 ETH-PERP to close the position.

  2. Market Close: Traders can use the close button on the positions table to quickly market close part or all of the position.

This tutorial will focus on the latter:

-> Navigate to any Positions table found on the Trading pages (both spot and perps) and Portfolio.

-> Click on the Close button at the far right of the position you wish to close.

-> Select what % of the position you want to market close.

-> You will see your estimated PnL.

-> Click on Market Close to place the order. If you don't have One-Click Trading you will need to sign the transaction.

Please note that the Market Close feature uses the same slippage tolerance as Market Orders. If your slippage is too low the order could fail. You can adjust this in settings (see Trading Basics tutorial).

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