Using the Open Trades Dashboard
Open Trades
When you buy a cryptocurrency pair like BTCUSD for example, that trade is said to be “open” until you sell all of the BTCUSD that you hold. In many cases our users will make multiple purchases of a crypto trading pair. In the case of BTCUSD, the total amount that you have accumulated in several “buy” orders is referred to as your open “position”. We offer the option to sell part of the position, or close it by selling the entire amount.
Long Positions
When you buy a cyrptocurrency pair, and later you close that position by selling it, that is referred to as a “long” trade. It has nothing to do with the amount fo time you held the position open. It has to do with the buying first, then selling to close the trade. Some cryptocurrency exchanges will allow you to sell first, and then buy back to “cover” the trade. This is essentially the act of borrowing money from the exchange in order to sell something you don’t actually own. You wll hear this called “short” selling, and it can also be described as “margin” trading. We do not offer short trading on margin as part of our current simulated platform. All positions are long.
In the screen shot below, you see a user’s Open Positions, visible on their Dashboard. Let’s take a look at each column, and what it means.
Token
This is the cryptocurrency token, without the base currency (USD). For example, the user bought 1.05 BTC with their USD, or 1.05 BTCUSD.
Amount
This is the number of tokens held in this open trade, not the amount in USD.
Total Cost
This is the amount of imaginary USD that was spent to create this open (long) position. It may have been one buy, or many smaller buys. The Trade History page would show us how many buy orders were executed by the user to create this position.
Avg. Price
The average price paid per token. When multiple buy orders are made at different prices over time, this value becomes very important to understand the true cost of the open position. It is also used to determine the profit percentage. Traders sometimes use Dollar Cost Averaging to lower the price per token in an open position.
Current Price
This is the latest market price that we have received for a particular token. Keep in mind that our price data may be delayed up to 15 minutes for Free Trial users.
Profit
This is the percentage of profit (or loss) that the current long position would receive if the user closed the trade (sold all the tokens). In a real-world trading scenario, you need to also factor in slippage, and exchange fees. Slippage refers to the shift in price that may have occurred between when you placed the order, and when the exchange actually settled the trade.