Risks

What can go wrong when you trade or copy trade perpetual futures, and how syntaka's limits help but cannot remove the risk.

Trading perpetual futures is risky. You can lose some or all of the money you put in, and you can lose it quickly. Only trade with money you can afford to lose.

syntaka is a tool. It does not give financial advice, and nothing on syntaka is a promise of profit.

Leverage cuts both ways

With leverage, a small move in the price can wipe out your margin. Copying a trader does not make a trade safer.

Leverage

Leverage lets you hold a position larger than your money. At 5×, $100 of margin holds a $500 position.

  • Gains are larger, and so are losses.
  • The higher the leverage, the smaller the price move that leads to liquidation.
  • Higher leverage does not change the fees in percent, but fees are paid on the full position value, not on your margin.

Your copy plan's Highest leverage caps the leverage your copies may use. Lower leverage gives you more room.

Liquidation

If your losses eat into your margin far enough, Hyperliquid closes your position for you. This is a liquidation.

  • It happens at the liquidation price, which the order form shows before you place an order.
  • You lose the margin of that position, and the close itself can cost more.
  • A liquidation can happen fast, for example during a sudden price spike, even between two checks of your account.

A stop loss can close a position before liquidation, but in a fast market it may fill at a worse price than you set.

Funding

Open perpetual positions pay or receive funding. When many traders are on your side, you usually pay. Over days or weeks, funding can add up to more than the fees. See Fees.

Copy trading risks

When you copy a trader, your account follows their trades, with your own plan and limits.

  • Past results don't predict future results. A trader who did well last month can lose next month. Charts, scores and rankings describe the past only.
  • Your result will differ from theirs. Your copy starts later, trades a smaller size, pays its own fees, and may fill at a different price. Very small positions may be too small to copy at all: Hyperliquid has a minimum order size.
  • A trader can change. They can take more risk, trade other coins, or stop trading. They can also be liquidated.
  • Several traders can lose together. Traders often hold the same coins, so a bad day for one coin can hit many copies.

syntaka watches for warning signs and pauses a copy, for example after three losses in a row, when a trader takes out most of their money, or when a trader is liquidated. This helps, but it reacts after the fact.

Your limits

Your copy plan has limits that stop losses from growing past what you chose:

  • Most to lose on one trade
  • Most to lose in one day
  • Stop everything after a drop of, which sets your Floor
  • Highest leverage

For live trading, syntaka's server also checks every order against its own limits before it sends it, and you have a kill switch that cancels your orders. See Live trading.

Limits reduce risk, they don't remove it

A price can jump past a limit before any order can react, and a loss limit counts losses after they happen.

Practice and live

MoneyWhat it means
PracticePretend moneyNothing real is spent, and nothing real is earned.
LiveThe real USDC on your Hyperliquid accountOrders fill against a real order book, may fill in parts or at worse prices, and pay real fees and funding.

Practice results are a guide only. Live results are usually somewhat worse than practice results. Practice and live are kept apart: live results are never added to practice, and practice never touches your money.

Risks outside the market

  • Hyperliquid itself. Your money sits on Hyperliquid. If Hyperliquid has an outage, a bug or another problem, syntaka can't protect your funds there.
  • syntaka being down. Your orders and stop losses rest on Hyperliquid and stay in place, but new copies and changes wait until syntaka is back.
  • Your own accounts. Someone who gets into your wallet or your syntaka account can cause losses. See Security.

Before you trade live

Check your Portfolio's After costs line

Not only the profit before fees.

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