How do I trade perpetual futures on OKX?

What's perpetual futures?

Perpetual futures, like expiry futures and options, are derivatives that track the price of an underlying asset. While perpetual futures work like expiry futures, they don’t have expiry dates, which means buyers and sellers can hypothetically keep their positions open perpetually — as long as their account holds enough margin to cover them.

The mechanism of price convergence is another key difference between perpetual futures and expiry futures contracts. With no settlement date for the former, a funding rate mechanism enforces price convergence at regular intervals (every eight hours). The funding rate is a fee exchanged between the long and short parties of a contract, depending on market movements, aiming to keep the contract price in line with the underlying asset’s spot price.

Our perpetual futures is a virtual derivative product where each futures contract has a unique face value and is settled in digital currencies, such as BTC, and USDT (for crypto-margined and USDT-margined futures, respectively). If you want to trade cryptocurrency perpetual futures on our platform, learn more below.

How can I trade perpetual futures?

1. Go to the perpetual futures section: visit our homepage and navigate to Trade in the top menu to see available markets. Then, select perpetual futures.
   
   To access the Trade section on our app, log in to your account and select Trade on the bottom navigation. Select Trade to open the navigation menu, and then select Perpetual.

2. Transfer funds to your trading account: to trade on our platform, your funding account needs to be funded. If you don't have any balance in your funding account, select Transfer from the Assets dropdown list in the top menu to move funds between accounts.
   
   When your account is funded, you can use the Transfer function to move coins or tokens from your Funding account to your Trading account to start trading. Once you've selected a coin or token and entered your desired amount to transfer, select Transfer.

3. Choose the perpetual futures contract to trade: you then need to select the margin type at the top of the page — for example, crypto-margined for futures settled in the underlying cryptocurrency or USDT-margined for futures settled in USDT.
   
   After choosing the margin type, you can select the trading pair using the filters located at the top of the page (for example, All for all available trading pairs, Top for the most popular trading pairs, DeFi for trading pairs with DeFi tokens, Storage for pairs with decentralized storage coins, or Alts for trading pairs with altcoins).
   
   Alternatively, you can scroll or search for the asset you want to trade.
   
   For this walkthrough, we'll select the USDT-margined perpetual futures contract labeled "BTCUSDT Perp". In this perpetual futures contract, USDT is the settlement currency, and BTC is the price unit of the futures contract.

4. Choose the type of leverage for futures trading: after funding your futures account, you can select the margin mode (either Isolated or Cross) and choose the desired leverage multiplier. If you choose Isolated margin mode, only designated funds will be used as margin. In Cross margin mode, your entire account balance is used as margin.
   
   Cross margin behaves differently depending on what account mode you're in: if single currency, then the entire currency balance will be used as margin, whereas if multi/portfolio margin, then the USD value of the entire account balance will be used as margin.

5. As part of our Unified Account system, we offer three account modes — Single-currency, Multi-currency, and Portfolio — to customize risk parameters further. Single-currency margin mode makes sure that only the currency traded will be used as a position’s margin. In Multi-currency margin mode, all assets held in your account are used as the margin.

6. Enter order details and execute: after selecting the margin type and leverage multiplier, you can choose the desired Order Type, Price and Amount for the trade. If you'd like to execute your order as soon as possible, you can select BBO (for example, the best bid offer).
   
   After entering order details, you can select Buy (Long) to enter a long contract (i.e., to buy BTC) or select Sell (Short) if you'd like to open a short position (i.e., to sell BTC).
   
   For example, you can set up a limit order of 44,120 USDT and open a long position for “BTCUSDT Perp” with your desired BTC amount.

7. (Optional) Set up the order with TP/SL: before you select Buy (Long) or Sell (Short), you can also select either Take profit or Stop loss. You’ll find more information about these helpful risk management tools here.
   
   When using these options, you can enter conditions for taking profit and stopping loss. Once you’ve entered your desired parameters, select Buy (Long) or Sell (Short).

8. Review your open position: after your trade is executed, you can review the status of your position by scrolling down to the trade history window on the trading homepage. Open orders are unfilled orders waiting to be executed. Positions, on the other hand, are executed trades.
   
   If you'd like to offset or close an open position, you can do so by entering a price and an amount to close and selecting Close. You can also select MKT Close All to exit an entire position at the current market price.
   
   This latter option should be reserved for times when you need to exit a position immediately — for example, during extreme price movements — since you'll be paying the higher Taker fee. Using limit orders to close a perpetual futures position is cheaper in fees. You can learn more about our fees here.

Where can I view the perpetual futures trading data and guides?

We provide a variety of resources to help users understand perpetual futures. You can select Information at the perpetual futures trading dashboard and view a positions tiers guide, liquidation history, funding rates, and more.