Risk management basics

Risk management means deciding before a trade how much you are willing to risk, and keeping every trade small enough that you can stay in the market through any run of results. This guide is educational, not financial advice. The numbers are illustrations, not recommendations.

Start with money you can afford to lose

Perpetual futures are high risk. Leverage magnifies losses, markets can move sharply in minutes, and liquidation can take a large part of a position’s margin. Before anything else, trade only with money you could lose entirely without it affecting your life.

NyxGo trades from your own account on the exchange and never takes custody of your funds. That also means everything in that account is exposed to your trading decisions. Some traders keep only their trading capital there and hold everything else elsewhere.

Decide your risk per trade

A common approach is to cap the loss on any single trade at a small, fixed fraction of your account. With a $5,000 account and a 1% cap, you risk $50 per trade.

The reason is staying power. Every trader has losing streaks, and keeping each loss small is what lets you recover and keep going:

Risk per trade	Account left after 10 losses in a row
1%	About 90.4%
5%	About 59.9%
10%	About 34.9%

Recovery is also harder than it looks. After a 50% loss, you need a 100% gain just to get back to where you started. Small, consistent risk keeps you in the game long enough for a good process to matter.

Size the position from your exit

Once you know how much you are willing to lose, the position size follows from where you would exit:

position value = amount at risk ÷ distance to your exit

Say your account is $5,000 and you risk 1%, which is $50. You want to go long a coin at $100, and your idea is wrong if it trades below $95. That is a 5% distance, so the position value is $50 ÷ 5% = $1,000, or 10 coins.

Fees on entry and exit, and slippage if you exit with a market order, mean the real loss at $95 will be a little more than $50. Leave room for that. The order form’s Est. fee line shows the cost of the entry.

Leverage is a separate decision, and it comes last. The same $1,000 position needs $500 of margin at 2x or $50 at 20x. Now check the liquidation price. On a market with a 40x maximum, an isolated long at 2x is liquidated after a drop of roughly 49%, far beyond your $95 exit. At 20x, liquidation comes after a drop of about 3.8%, near $96.20, which is above your exit. You would be liquidated before your plan ever came into play. Leverage and margin shows how these distances are worked out.

Check this: Make sure your liquidation price sits beyond your planned exit, so your plan, not the exchange, decides when you leave. You’ll find the Liq. price in your Positions tab right after you open a trade.

Plan your exits before you enter

Every trade should have two prices decided in advance: the stop, where your idea is proven wrong, and the target, where you’ll take profit. Deciding them before you enter keeps decisions out of the heat of the moment.

In NyxGo, you can place both exits on the exchange so they work even when you’re away:

• Stops can rest as trigger orders. Tick TP/SL on a market or limit order to attach a stop loss to the entry, or set one on an open position from the TP / SL column of the Positions tab. The Pro menu also has Stop Market and Stop Limit orders.
• Profit targets can rest on the book as a Reduce only limit order, or as a take profit with TP/SL. For a long, that’s a sell at your target. Reduce-only orders can only close the position, never flip it.
• Trailing stops follow the price. A trailing stop agent keeps a stop on the exchange behind your position and only moves it in your favor.
• Stops can slip. Once triggered, a market stop fills at whatever the book offers, so in a fast market you may fill worse than your planned level, and a stop limit may not fill at all. NyxGo also sends its own market orders, including Market close, as immediate-or-cancel orders limited by your max slippage setting, so they can fill only in part.

Once you are in a trade, don’t move your stop further away to avoid taking the loss. That turns a planned small loss into an unplanned large one. See Order types in NyxGo for how each order behaves.

Key idea: Choose the exit first, then the size, then the leverage, in that order.

Keep leverage and exposure in check

A few habits keep your total risk visible:

• Use the lowest leverage your plan needs. Leverage only changes how much margin backs a position. Lower leverage leaves more distance to liquidation for the same trade.
• Count correlated positions together. Several longs on coins that tend to move together behave like one bigger position. On cross margin, they also draw on the same collateral.
• Watch Margin usage. The Account section under the order form shows how much of your equity is tied up as margin. The bar turns amber, then red, as usage climbs.
• Include holding costs. Funding is paid every hour and fees are charged on every fill. On positions you hold for days, they add up. See Funding rates explained.

Treat other traders’ ideas as ideas

The Community feed and the Leaderboard are useful for seeing what other traders think, but they are opinions and past records, not signals. A post tagged bullish doesn’t tell you whether its author holds the position, how large it is, or where they’ll exit. A strong 7-day record doesn’t predict next week. Size every trade from your own plan.

Reviewing your own record helps more. Your Trade history tab lists every fill with its fee and closed PnL, and your profile shows realized PnL, win rate and volume over 7, 30 or 90 days. Only you see them unless you choose to share them. Look at the size of your losses next to your win rate. A high win rate with occasional large losses can still lose money overall.

Key takeaways

• Trade only with money you can afford to lose. Perps are high risk and nothing here is financial advice.
• Cap the loss on each trade at a small, fixed share of your account so losing streaks stay survivable.
• Size positions from your exit: amount at risk divided by distance to your stop, then pick the lowest leverage that works.
• Place your stop and target as orders when you enter: TP/SL, stop orders or a trailing stop agent for stops, and reduce-only limits for targets.
• Make sure your liquidation price sits well beyond your planned exit, never between it and your entry.