Spot vs perpetuals
Spot- You buy or sell the actual asset (like HYPE, BTC, ETH) on a USDC-quoted pair.
- You own it directly: purchases settle to your wallet and can be sent or transferred out.
- No leverage, no funding, no liquidation risk. See the dedicated Spot Trading page.
- You trade a contract tied to the asset’s price rather than the asset itself.
- You can go long (price up) or short (price down), with no expiry: hold as long as you want, earning or paying funding.
- Funding accrues hourly and keeps perp prices in line with the spot market.
- Leverage lets you trade bigger size with less capital. Maximum leverage varies by market.
Cross vs isolated margin
- Cross: all cross positions share your cross margin balance as collateral. In a liquidation, your cross margin balance and any remaining open positions in cross mode may be forfeited.
- Isolated: margin is restricted to the individual position. If that position’s margin ratio reaches 100%, only that position is liquidated. Margin can be added or removed on the position.
Leverage
Leverage is set per market with the slider in the leverage control, from 1x up to that market’s maximum. Maximums differ by market and are shown in the control. Settings above 10x show a warning: higher leverage increases the risk of liquidation.Long, short, and reverse
Perp trades can be toggled between long and short in the trade panel. Reverse closes a position and opens an equal one in the opposite direction, flipping longs into shorts and shorts into longs. You can also reverse all positions, all longs, or all shorts from the positions menu.Trading from the chart
- View as: search a trader or paste an address to overlay their positions, open orders, and fills on your chart.
- Quick orders: click the plus icon on the chart’s price scale to open an order ticket at that price, with one-click limit long or short (limit buy or sell on spot), stop long or short, take profit, and stop loss.
- Snoop mode: browse the entire terminal as another address. Trading is disabled while snooping.
Order Types
Every order type has its own reference page with placement behavior, parameters, defaults, and a worked example. Start with the Order Types overview, or jump straight to a type:- Market and Limit
- Scale: ladder limit orders across a price range
- Stop Limit and Stop Market
- Chase: a limit order that follows the best bid or ask
- TWAP and Swarm: work large size with less market impact
- Take Profit / Stop Loss and Trailing Stop

