Have you ever encountered the following scenarios?
After opening a long futures position, the market quickly reverses and prices continue to drop, expanding your losses. You wait for a rebound that never comes, ultimately having to close the position and absorb a massive loss.
After opening a long futures position, the price keeps rising. However, you become overly optimistic and believe it will rise further, missing the right time to take profit. Shortly after, the price drops rapidly, and you miss the opportunity altogether.
After opening a long futures position, you are too busy to monitor your position. By the time you check, the position has been liquidated, and you have been charged a hefty liquidation fee.
We recommend using the Take Profit (TP) and Stop Loss (SL) features to resolve these issues.
What is Take Profit and Stop Loss?
Take Profit and Stop Loss is a tool designed to help users capture profit opportunities and control position losses. In Pionex futures trading, a Take Profit order secures your gains, while a Stop Loss order caps your losses. To use it, you set a trigger price. Once the market reaches this price, the system executes a market order to close your position, allowing you to lock in profits or stop your losses in time.
How Take Profit and Stop Loss Can Help You
Assume you hold a long BTC/USDT perpetual futures position, and the current price is 110,000 USDT.
To prevent massive losses, you set a Stop Loss with a trigger price of 100,000 USDT. If the price falls to 100,000 USDT or below, the system instantly closes your position, preventing further losses from a continuous downtrend.
To avoid missing out on profits, you set a Take Profit with a trigger price of 120,000 USDT. If the price rises to 120,000 USDT or above, the system instantly closes your position, protecting your gains from a sudden market reversal.
To prevent forced liquidation, you note the estimated liquidation price is 90,000 USDT. You set a Stop Loss at a price slightly higher than this, such as 91,000 USDT. This way, the system automatically closes your position before it reaches the liquidation threshold, significantly reducing your liquidation risk.
The trading fee for closing a position manually or via SL is far less than a forced liquidation fee. At the time of this article's writing, the liquidation fee rate for this contract is 1.15%, while the standard trading fee rate does not exceed 0.05%. If you hold a 1 BTC futures position:
Liquidation fee: Estimated liquidation price × Position size × Liquidation fee rate = 90,000 × 1 × 1.15% = 1,035 USDT
Trading fee: Average closing price × Position size × Trading fee rate = 90,500 × 1 × 0.05% = 45.25 USDT
By setting a Stop Loss, you successfully avoid a liquidation fee that is nearly 23 times higher than a standard trading fee! No one can predict exactly how the crypto market will move on any given day. TP/SL orders help you effectively avoid potential risks and more accurately manage the expected profit and loss of every position.
Note: A Stop Loss order is not a foolproof guarantee against liquidation. It may fail if the liquidation price changes or during extreme market volatility.
Take Profit & Stop Loss Modes
Currently, TP/SL supports 2 modes:
Close Entire Position: Closes the total position amount at market price once the trigger price is reached.
Close Partial Position (Split Position): You set a specific amount to close. Once the trigger price is reached, only that specified amount is closed at market price.
Users can set up TP/SL when creating an order or while an order is running. When creating an order, it defaults to the Close Entire Position mode. To set a Partial Close, tap "Advanced Settings" and switch to "Current Order."
Note: If both Take Profit and Stop Loss are set, triggering one will automatically cancel the other.
How to Set Take Profit and Stop Loss
On the App:
Open the Pionex App and tap the Trade button at the bottom.
In the Trade interface, tap "USDT-M Futures" or "Coin-M Futures" at the top, scroll down to your position details, and tap the TP/SL button.
In the TP/SL page, select your closing method and order type, enter the trigger price, choose the price type, and tap Confirm to complete the setup.
Partial Position Mode (App only):
Open the Pionex App and tap the Trade button.
In the Trade interface, tap "USDT-M Futures" or "Coin-M Futures", scroll down, switch to "Split Orders", tap "More" in your position details, and select TP/SL Settings.
Enter the trigger price, choose the price type, and tap Confirm.
Trailing Stop: A trailing stop is an exit strategy that helps users lock in profits while pursuing higher returns during trends. If the price direction reverses (referred to as a "drawdown" — a price drop for longs, or a price increase for shorts) by a specified price difference or percentage, the trailing stop will close your position.
Lock Profit: Lock Profit is a stop-loss strategy executed when a position is profitable, also known as a "positive stop-loss." You can set a stop-loss point higher than your entry cost to protect realized gains. The core idea is to ensure that even if the price reverses, a winning position won't turn into a losing one. While a breakeven setting yields a net profit of exactly zero, a Lock Profit setting is greater than zero, allowing you to retain part or all of your profits during a drop. This strategy only applies to profitable positions, which is its fundamental difference from a standard stop-loss.
On the Web:
Open the Pionex website, log in, and click Futures > Futures Trading at the top.
Scroll down to the positions/orders section, select "Cross/Isolated", and slide right to find the TP/SL settings button.
Click "Settings", choose your closing method and order type, enter the trigger price, choose the price type, and click Confirm.
Note: The Web version currently does not support viewing split orders, so you cannot set partial position TP/SL on the Web.
How to Check Canceled or Filled TP/SL Records
Web: Go to [Futures] > [Order History] > Change [Limit & Time] to [TP/SL].
App: Go to [History Data] > [Order History] > Change [Limit & Time] to [TP/SL].
FAQ
Q: Why do some TP/SL orders become invalid?
A: TP/SL orders are prioritized based on their proximity to the current price (the closer to the current price, the higher the priority). When a triggered higher-priority TP/SL order completely closes the entire position, any subsequent TP/SL orders become invalid.Example: You hold a long ETH/USDT position with a current price of 4,500 USDT and a size of 3 ETH. You set 3 Stop Loss orders:
Trigger Price = 4,400 USDT; Size = 1 ETH
Trigger Price = 4,300 USDT; Size = 2 ETH
Trigger Price = 4,200 USDT; Size = 1 ETH The first two orders are closer to the current price and have higher priority. Once triggered, they close the entire 3 ETH position, rendering the 3rd order invalid. However, "invalid" does not mean canceled. If you add to your position before it is fully closed (e.g., adding 1 ETH before the 2nd order triggers), the 3rd order will become active again because the first two orders can no longer close the whole position.
Q: What happens if my position size exceeds the maximum market order size for my "Close Entire Position" TP/SL?
A: The system will repeatedly submit the TP/SL order until the entire position is closed. Please note that since these are market orders, price slippage may occur.
Q: Why are the profit and loss amounts different when I set TP and SL to the same percentage (e.g., 5%)?
A: This is due to trading fees. When taking profit, your net gain is the price difference minus trading fees. When stopping a loss, your total loss is the price difference plus trading fees. Because fees are paid in both scenarios, the absolute financial loss at a specific percentage will always be slightly higher than the profit at that same percentage. (Note: The estimated PNL amount shown on the TP/SL setup page already includes the calculated fees.)
Q: Why was my position still liquidated even though I set a Stop Loss?
A: This may happen if your Stop Loss trigger price is too close to your liquidation price. During intense market volatility, the price might skip your trigger price and directly hit the liquidation price, causing instant liquidation and invalidating your Stop Loss. Another possibility is that you used the "Last Price" as your trigger, whereas Pionex triggers liquidations based on the "Mark Price." The Mark Price might hit the liquidation threshold before the Last Price hits your Stop Loss. To prevent this, avoid setting your Stop Loss too close to the liquidation price. Additionally, using "Mark Price" as your trigger price helps reduce the risk of being liquidated while a Stop Loss is active.