Trading an Arlo

The deal, in numbers

You put in

$1,000

You trade

$3,000

Paid before you at the end

$2,150

Your loss room

$800

The wallet must grow this much for you to break even

+5%

The most you can lose

$1,000

The $2,150 paid before you is the Backer’s $2,000, their $120 bonus and Arlo’s $30. Break-even is before GMX’s own trading costs. Drag the wallet’s final value to see what comes back to you.

What you can trade

Your trades open on GMX, a trading exchange that runs on Arbitrum. You can trade any market that GMX prices with its live price feed. The code needs that feed to value your trades, so markets without one are left out.

You can go long, to gain if the price rises, or short, to gain if it falls. You can hold as many trades at once as your loss room allows.

Leverage, and the two caps on every trade

Leverage is a trade’s size divided by its margin. Margin is the money behind the trade. Size is how much the trade controls. Arlo sets no leverage limit of its own: you can use up to the most GMX allows on that market.

Each trade has two caps instead: at most $1,000 of margin and at most $15,000 of size. The size cap is a fixed amount, not a multiple of your margin. $150 of margin at 100x reaches it. So does $500 at 30x, or $1,000 at 15x.

The caps count per market and per direction. Every Bitcoin long you hold counts towards one cap, across every GMX pool that tracks Bitcoin. A Bitcoin short has a cap of its own.

Stops and take profits

A stop is a price where a trade closes to limit the loss. Set one on every trade. A trade with no stop counts its whole margin against your loss room, because nothing limits its loss but its margin.

Your stop accepts whatever price GMX fills it at, so a fast market cannot leave it stuck over price. It can still close past your stop price when prices jump.

GMX can freeze an order it cannot fill, for example when the trade is already close to liquidation. A frozen stop counts as no stop until you replace it. The app shows it, and gives you two ways out: replace it, or close the trade.

A take profit is a price where a trade closes to lock in a gain. It frees no loss room, because it does nothing to limit the loss.

• You can always move a stop closer, close part of a trade, or close it all.
• Moving a stop further away, or removing it, must fit in the loss room first.
• The app offers stop prices only between your entry and the point where GMX would liquidate the trade.

Your loss room

Your loss room starts at $800: the $3,000 wallet less the $2,200 line. Every open trade uses some of it: its loss at its stop, plus $1 and 0.10% of its size to close it. A trade opens only if that fits in what is left.

If prices move against you, the wallet falls, but your trades get closer to their stops by the same amount. The room you have left stays the same. The loss room shows how, step by step.

How your Arlo ends

• Time runs out. After 30 days, every trade still open closes at the market price. The app warns you 48 and 24 hours before, so you can close at your own price first.
• You end it early. You can end it at any time. It cannot be undone, and the fee stays the same. The Backer is paid the same amount, sooner.
• The wallet falls to $2,200. Trading stops, every trade closes, and the Arlo ends.

If trades are still open when your Arlo ends, they are closed for you at the market’s price then. Arlo pays the network cost of closing them. Close every trade yourself first if you want to choose your own prices.

What you can and cannot do