With the futures grid strategy, investors can earn from market volatility by buying low and selling high, or selling high and buying low. This strategy allows investors to keep up with market fluctuations and generate profits.
The core of this strategy lies in “arbitrage in fluctuation.” It is particularly suitable for investors who anticipate longer periods of sideways markets. The futures grid strategy offers three modes: long, short, and neutral, providing investors with flexibility in their investment approach.
1. Difference among Futures Grid Bot – Long, Short and Neutral
2. Futures Grid vs. Spot vs. Manual Futures
3. How to start the Futures Grid Bot?
Difference among Futures Grid Bot – Long, Short and Neutral
| Suitable Market Condition | Specific Operation | |
| Long | When the price moves sideways up. | The bot starts by entering the market with a long position. When the price reaches a high point, it closes the long position. When the price drops again, it continues to open new long positions. This strategy involves buying at high points and selling at low points, allowing you to profit from the price fluctuations. |
| Short | When the price moves sideways down. | The bot starts by entering the market with a short position. When the price reaches a low point, it closes the short position. When the price rises again, it continues to open new short positions. This strategy involves selling at high points and buying at low points, allowing you to profit from the price fluctuations. |
| Neutral | When the price moves sideways. | In a neutral grid, no initial positions are opened. Place sell limit orders above the market price and limit buy orders below the market price. Sell at higher levels or close long positions, buy at lower levels or open long positions. Since no initial positions are opened, the margin in a neutral grid is more abundant compared to the long grid and short grid, and the liquidation price is more favorable. |
Futures Grid vs. Spot vs. Manual Futures:
| Futures Grid | Spot | Manual Futures | |
| Supported Opening Position | Neutral, Long, or Short. Fearless of Bull & Bear | Long Only | Long & Short |
| Suitable Market Conditions | Best Suited for Sideways, Sideways Up, or Sideways Down | Sideways Up | Sideways Down |
| Capital Utilization Rate | ★★★ | ★★★★ | ★ |
| Risk Attribute | Lower Risk Compared to Manual Futures | Low Risk | High Risk |
| Profit Attribute | Manageable Risk with Substantial Return | Return Lower Than Futures Grid | High Risk, High Return |
How to start the Futures Grid Bot?
In APP：
Step 1: Download/update and log in to the latest version of the Pionex app to access Futures Grid.
Step 2: Click on [Bot] in the bottom menu bar, then click on [Create] - [Futures], where you will find the "Futures Grid" option.
Step 3: Once you are in the "Futures Grid" section, select your preferred futures trading pair, then click on "Copy Strategy." The system will present three options: "Long," "Short," and "Neutral". Choose any grid type, and the system will recommend corresponding AI strategies. You can then select your preferred strategy by clicking the [Copy Bot] button.
You can also choose “Customize” to manually set up your grid parameters, adjust the leverage, and create a grid.
Step 4: After copying the strategy, enter your investment amount, and then click [Create] - [Confirm] to place your bot order.
How can I view the profit of the contract grid?
You can simply click on the [Bot] page to view the detailed profit information of all your futures grid orders.
On Web：
Step 1: Open the Pionex website, log in to your account, click on [Futures] in the top menu bar, then click on [Futures Bot], where you will find the "Futures Grid" option.
Step 2: Once you are in the "Futures Grid" section, select your preferred futures trading pair, then click on "Copy Strategy." The system will present three options: "Long," "Short," and "Neutral". Choose any grid type, and the system will recommend corresponding AI strategies. You can then select your preferred strategy by clicking the [Copy Bot] button.
You can also choose “Customize” to manually set up your grid parameters, adjust the leverage, and create a grid. The process of creating a grid using “Customize” is as follows:
Step 3: After copying the strategy, enter your investment amount, and then click [Create] - [Confirm] to place your bot order.
Futures Grid FAQ
Q： What is a Futures Grid bot?
A： Futures grid bots are tools for automated trading strategies. They are designed to establish long and short positions at regular intervals within a predetermined price range. Grid bots seek to capitalize on price fluctuations. They perform best in volatile markets.
Q： What trading pairs are supported by Futures Grid Bots?
A： Pionex supports USDT perpetual contracts as well as cryptocurrency pairs, including BTC, ETH, and SOL as quotes.
Q： Why is there a division into actual investment and dynamic margin after opening an order?
A： The actual investment amount is the amount you use to open an order, while the dynamic margin is the reserved “safety cushion.” You can reserve a portion of the total investment amount as dynamic margin when opening an order, or you can add it later. This amount is used to hedge against your floating losses and reduce the risk of liquidation.
When you go long, adding dynamic margins will lower your estimated liquidation price, and when you go short, it will increase your estimated liquidation price. When your grid is close to the liquidation price, you can reduce the risk by adding dynamic margin. If your grid becomes profitable later and moves away from the liquidation price, you can withdraw the margin.
Q： Can I add/withdraw margin to my Futures grid bot?
A： Yes, to manage the margin in your bot, click on the running bot, then go to [More] - [Adjust Margin]. If you want to add more margin, select [Add Margin]. If you want to withdraw margin, select [Withdraw Margin]. The added margin will be used as an available balance to maintain your position or for fee deduction and will not affect any of the bot parameters.
Q： Is it necessary to enable the margin reservation? When is it better to reserve margin?
A： When you open an order, if you enable the margin reservation, the system will reserve a portion of the investment amount as a “safety cushion,” which is the dynamic margin. It will lower your estimated liquidation price when you go long and raise it when you go short. If you don’t want to reserve dynamic margin, you can uncheck the option and leave the dynamic margin field blank, only filling in the actual investment amount. To protect your grid from approaching the liquidation price, we generally recommend enabling it, especially when using higher leverage.
If you are already experienced with futures grids and prefer to have more control over your funds, you can uncheck it first and then use the margin management feature to add or reduce margin after opening an order.
Q： Will the grid profits automatically become margins?
A： Yes, your grid profits will help reduce the liquidation risk. However, this portion of the grid profits cannot be withdrawn at the moment.
Q： Can the grid profits be withdrawn?
A： This feature is not available currently. We are planning for it, so please be patient, and thank you for your cooperation.
Q： What is the maximum number of orders for futures grids?
A： Restrictions based on "actual investment" amount:
- No restrictions for up to 20 bots.
- 20-50 bots require an investment exceeding 50 USDT.
- More than 50 bots require an investment exceeding 200 USDT.
Restrictions based on trading pairs:
- No limits for major currencies (BTC.PERP, ETH.PERP).
- Maximum 20 bots for other currencies (ADA.PERP, BNB.PERP, XRP.PERP, SOL.PERP, DOGE.PERP)
- Other pairings are limited to 5 bots per trading pair.
Q： Is there a limit to the number of Futures grids?
A： Yes, there is. The minimum number of grids is 2, and the maximum number of grids is 500.
Q： Difference between Mark Price and Last Price?
A： The mark price refers to the estimated real value of the futures contract. It considers the fair value of an asset to avoid unnecessary liquidations during market fluctuations. Pionex futures grids use the mark price as the trigger condition for liquidation and also calculate floating profits and losses based on the mark price. Please refer to the official website documentation for the calculation method of the mark price: Mark Price – Pionex Trading Bot.
Q： What is the funding rate, and why am I charged a fee?
A： Funding rate is a special mechanism in perpetual futures contracts aimed at anchoring the futures contract price to the spot price. The funding rate applies to both manual and grid trading and is settled every 8 hours. If the funding rate is positive, long position holders pay short position holders, and if it is negative, it is the opposite. Please refer to the official website documentation for the calculation method of the funding fee: Funding Fee – Pionex Trading Bot.
Q： After charging the funding rate, will it be deducted/increased in which column? How can I view the historical details?
A： The income and expenditure of the funding rate will be reflected in the Unrealized profit. You can find the historical data on the bot by going to [Detail] - [Transaction] - [Funding History] - [Funding Fee].
Q： Why is there no buy order within the grid range?
A： This is due to the use of dynamic orders by Pionex to achieve a two-tier buffer technology. When you have multiple grid cells, to maximize the utilization of your margin, the system will not place all orders at once but will place orders near the current price and adjust your orders as the price moves.
Supplementary explanation: What is the two-layer buffer?
Due to the maintenance of margin requirements, when an order is close to liquidation and remains unfilled, it is usually automatically canceled. In this case, some exchanges may choose to close grid trading and liquidate positions automatically. However, if the market quickly rebounds after a dip, this approach can cause unnecessary losses to users. In such a scenario, Pionex does not close the user’s orders but automatically restores the maximum amount of unfilled orders based on the current position and margin. After the user adds margins, more orders are automatically placed.
Thanks to the two-layer buffer, Pionex futures grids support leverage of up to 100 times, and users can freely set parameters such as range and grid count without considering the correlation between parameters, greatly improving the user experience.
Q： Why am I prompted with “order close to estimated liquidation price” even though the current price is far from the estimated liquidation price?
A： Due to the leverage of the futures contract, profit and loss fluctuations are often significant. To avoid situations where you may not have enough time to add dynamic margins during volatile market movements, we will provide a warning when the estimated liquidation price is not far away.
Q： Why can’t I open a futures grid even though there is money in the futures account?
A： For risk management purposes, Pionex futures manual trading operates in a separate account, while robot strategies and spot trading are associated with the main account. If your main account balance is insufficient, but there are funds in the futures account, you can transfer the funds to the main account and then open a futures grid. You can find the transfer button on the account page or the manual setting page of the futures grid, as shown in the image.
Q： Can the futures trial funds be used to offset futures grid fees?
A： No, they cannot. For risk management purposes, Pionex futures manual trading operates in a separate account, while robot strategies and spot trading are associated with the main account. Futures trial funds are only available for use in the manual trading account (i.e., the futures account) and cannot be used in the main account.
Q： Why is my total P&L showing a loss while my Grid Profit is positive?
A： Grid Profit represents the sum of the profits generated by each completed buy and sell order pair in a trading strategy. However, total P&L includes both realized and unrealized profits and losses. If the open positions in the bot are currently suffering losses and the realized Grid Profit is not enough to offset them, you may see a negative Total Profit and Loss.
Q： Why is the total number of Buy and Sell orders not equal to the number of my grids?
A： Our Futures Grid Robot uses a dynamic order placing model, where the number of pending orders is always a limited number of orders near the current price, thus increasing your capital utilization and profitability, and reducing the risk of a potential blowout.
Please get in touch with Pionex Support if you have any other questions.
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