Once you open a perpetual futures position, you can manage it through the contract’s details page or from the Perpetuals page, which provides an aggregated view of all your positions. Both views let you monitor performance, adjust leverage and margin, manage risk, and close positions.

The Perpetuals page displays your lifetime perpetuals profit and loss (P&L) and provides an overview of your open positions.

• Lifetime P&L: A running total of all profits and losses from open and closed positions (displayed in USD).
  • Open P&L: A live total of P&L of your open positions
  • Closed P&L: The total P&L from closed positions
• Open positions: Lists the position details for all open positions. If you have more than 1 open position, tap the arrow next to the contract name to view all metrics.

The Perpetuals detail pages display historical price charts and contract details for each individual contract. You’ll also find your open and pending orders if you have any for each contract.

You can view the details of your open positions on both the Perpetuals page and the details page of each contract.

• Total P&L (Profit and loss): The total profit or loss from the position, including both realized and unrealized amounts. This indicates the overall performance of an active position.
• Liquidation price: The estimated price at which the position will be partially or fully closed automatically to prevent further losses. This helps assess how close the position is to liquidation based on current market conditions. View Position health for information about liquidation risk indicators.
• Position size: The current notional value of the contract.
• Quantity: The current position size of the contract quoted in the base currency.
• Entry price: The average price at which the current position was opened. This is used to calculate the position’s profit and loss.
• Mark price: The current estimated value of a contract, based on the index price and recent market activity. Long positions are liquidated when the mark price falls below the liquidation price, and short positions when it rises above the liquidation price.
• Initial margin ratio (IMR): The percentage of the position’s current value (margin + unrealized profit) that was used as initial margin when the position was opened. View Position health for information about liquidation risk indicators.
• Maintenance margin ratio (MMR): The percentage of the position’s current value (margin + unrealized profit) that must be maintained as margin to avoid liquidation. View Position health for information about liquidation risk indicators.
• Cross margin: The amount of margin currently used to support all open cross margin positions. Increasing or decreasing cross margin will impact the health and liquidation risk of all open cross margin positions.
• Isolated margin: The amount of margin currently used to support an individual isolated position only. Increasing or decreasing isolated margin will only impact the position health and liquidation risk of that position.
• Leverage: The multiplier that determines the position size relative to the amount of margin used. Adjusting leverage impacts margin requirements and affects liquidation risk.
• Take profit (TP): A type of limit order that executes at a price you set to secure potential profits and manage risk.
• Stop loss (SL): A type of limit order that executes at a price you set to limit potential losses and manage risk.

You can increase leverage on an open position, but you cannot decrease it.

• If you have pending orders for that contract with the same margin mode, you can only select the same leverage setting as the pending order.
• The current maximum leverage setting is 3x.

You can increase or decrease the amount of margin posted to an open position by tapping on the margin balance in the position details on either the Perpetuals page or contract detail page.

When you enter the amount of margin being increased, you’ll see the estimated total margin balance after the increase and an updated liquidation price.

When you decrease margin, you will see the same information.

• EUR margin is withdrawn first to avoid foreign exchange (FX) conversions.
• If USD margin is withdrawn, it will be converted to EUR before it’s returned to your buying power.

Decreasing margin from a cross position will impact the position health and liquidation prices of all open cross positions.

Margin used to support your positions is displayed in USD, but may include EUR from buying power and USD from P&L.

An actual FX conversion does not happen on this EUR margin amount when opening a trade.

When adding margin, funds used will be prioritized by:

1. USD from available margin (which you received from settled P&L gains)
2. Existing EUR margin
3. New EUR cash from buying power

If you decrease margin, EUR margin is prioritized first to avoid FX conversions. If USD margin is included in the amount, it will be converted to euros. The final amount will be instantly tradeable but cannot be withdrawn for up to 1 day after the settlement. There are no FX fees for this conversion.

Minimum margin requirements

To maintain and open a position, you must meet certain margin thresholds.

• Initial margin requirement (IMR): You must post at least 20% of your position’s notional value to open a position
• Maintenance margin requirement (MMR): You must maintain at least 10% of your positions’s notional value as margin. Falling below this level may trigger a partial liquidation
• Close-out margin: If your margin falls below 5% of the position’s notional value, your position may be fully liquidated

Margin floors are recalculated at the end of each 15-minute settlement window based on the current price of the contract. This will affect both your initial margin and maintenance margin requirements.

The amount of funds that will be added or removed from your buying power when you increase or decrease margin from an open position. You can find this on the order details page after the increase or decrease is filled.

These payments between long and short traders help keep the contract price in line with the underlying asset. Payments occur every 8 hours (00:00 UTC, 08:00 UTC, and 16:00 UTC).

When the funding rate is positive:

• Long position holders pay short position holders.
• The contract price is higher than the spot price indicating more demand for longs.
• It incentivizes more people to short the contract (or close longs) to bring the contract price closer to the spot price.

When the funding rate is negative:

• Short position holders pay long position holders.
• The contract price is lower than the spot price indicating more demand for short positions.
• It incentivizes more people to long the contract (or close shorts) to bring the contract price closer to the spot price.

Our partner venue settles profits and losses every 15 minutes.

• Losses are deducted from your active margin balance
• If EUR margin is used to cover a loss, it’s converted to USD using the exchange rate at settlement. There are no fees to convert to USD.
• If you don’t have enough margin to cover a loss, your position may be partially or fully liquidated to restore margin balance.

Perpetual futures don’t have an expiration date, but there are 2 types of settlements:

Periodic

Open positions are settled every 15 minutes. Your P&L during the 15-minute window is realized and your margin balance is updated accordingly.

Closed

When you close a position or a position is liquidated, there is one final settlement. For isolated positions and cross positions with no other open cross positions, any unrealized P&L is realized and returned to your buying power. If you close a cross position with other open cross positions, unrealized P&L is realized and added to your cross margin balance to support the other open cross positions.

Robinhood provides tools and information to help you monitor position health, particularly regarding liquidation risks.

• Initial margin ratio (IMR) and maintenance margin ratio (MMR): These metrics found on perpetuals details pages and Perpetuals page provide insight to your position’s performance. Lower ratios are a sign of a healthy position. Higher ratios can indicate your position is nearing a liquidation state. View Position/margin health for information about liquidation risk indicators.
• Liquidation price: Found on the perpetuals details pages and Perpetuals page, the liquidation price will become active and change color to indicate the position is nearing liquidation. Tap the price to find information on how to restore margin health. View Position/margin health for information about liquidation risk indicators.
• Take profit (TP) and stop loss (SL) orders: Manage risk with TP/SL orders by locking in potential profits and reducing potential losses. View Take profit and stop loss orders to learn how to place them.

Liquidations will occur when the MMR exceeds 100% because you no longer have enough margin to support your position. A partial liquidation will only liquidate a portion of your position if you have enough margin to support the remaining position. If your margin is too low to support any portion of the position, it will be fully liquidated.

During the liquidation process, you are not able to take any action on the position. You will be notified if the position was partially or fully liquidated after its finalized. If your position is only partially liquidated, the remaining portion will become an open position. You should continue to monitor your position to avoid additional liquidation.

Other types of liquidations

• Auto-deleveraging (ADL): In the event the partner venue cannot liquidate positions in an orderly process, they may liquidate profitable traders, a process known as auto-deleveraging. ADL risk increases on positions with greater leverage and unsettled P&L. If an ADL is declared, only traders with unrealized P&L in the same 15-minute trading window as the ADL are at risk, but not all traders with positive unrealized P&L will be at risk. ADL will only be enforced until the partner venue can process all liquidations across traders.
• Socializing losses: If the partner venue still cannot process all required liquidations across traders after the ADL process, the partner venue will spread losses among all traders with profitable P&L in a 15-minute settlement window. Only P&L can be clawed back, but not the collateral or position itself. This is known as socializing losses.
• Automatic platform-wide contract closure: In extremely rare cases, the partner venue may pause trading until liquidations can be processed across their books. Your positions will be liquidated and open orders in the market will be canceled,and you’ll be unable to trade until the shutdown ends. This shutdown is on a market-by-market basis.

Trading or other services may be delayed or temporarily unavailable for a few reasons.

• Funding issues: You may not be able to increase positions or margin if it is not possible to expeditiously submit or use funds on the executing exchange. You will still be able to reduce both.
• Market data issues: Delayed or inaccurate price data may cause orders to be rejected, delayed, or not filled as expected.
• Exchange outages: If our executing exchange experiences a full or partial outage, trading or settlement functionality may be limited or unavailable.
• Trading halts: All trading may be paused for a specific asset or all assets due to an internal halt or a halt at our executing exchange.
• System issues: Technical issues may only affect certain functions related to trading, settlements, or data, without halting all activity.
• Extreme market conditions: High volatility may cause delays or prevent some orders from filling.

Trading restrictions can be in place if your Initial Margin Ratio (IMR) or Maintenance Margin Ratio (MMR) is above 100% (e.g., liquidation is ongoing). In such states, you cannot enter exposure-increasing orders and any open orders will be canceled on the position that is impacted.

When managing and closing positions, you may incur fees. You can review fees in your order history. Check out Fees for details.

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