Long
A long is a bet that the price goes up. You make money when it rises and lose when it falls. On a futures exchange you can open a long without holding the coin, with or without leverage.
Start here · 2-minute read
New here? Read a play before you make one
PatternPlus looks at what happened after setups like today's, across years of prices, and shows the plays that did best, with how often they got liquidated. A second check before you trade, not someone else's call to follow blind.
How to read a play
Example · not today's play
- ▲ $SOL LONG · 7 days · 5×The coin, the bet (long: you win if it goes up), how long it stays open (the hold) and the leverage.
- 🎯 63% chance to hit +18% (price +3.6%)The potential: 63 in 100 similar past trades touched +18% on the money put in at some point while open. A take-profit there locks it in.
- typical close +6% · liquidated 1 in 25Held to the end, the middle result was +6%. One in 25 similar trades was liquidated: the stake was lost.
- ✓ right 34 vs 26The call behind it was right 34 times against 26 for that side on any day, on data it had never seen: earned.
Five rules before your first leveraged trade
- Only money you can lose. Every play can lose, the best ones included. Size each bet so losing it all is fine.
- Lower leverage first. 2× to 5× gives you room to be wrong. The liquidation line comes closer with every step up.
- Know your exit before you enter. Set the take-profit at the potential and a stop-loss under it, or know where the liquidation line is.
- Odds, not promises. A 7-in-10 play still misses 3 times in 10. Our receipts keep every miss.
- Check the ✓. An earned call has passed a test on data it never saw. A ◇ play has not, yet.
The words, in plain English
Short
A short is a bet that the price goes down. You make money when it falls and lose when it rises. You never hold the coin: the exchange settles the difference. A short has no ceiling on how far the price can run against it, which is why the liquidation line matters even more.
Leverage
Leverage (2×, 5×, 10×) means the exchange lends you money so your trade is bigger than your stake. With $100 at 10× you trade $1,000 of the coin: a 2% move is +$20 or −$20, 20% of your money. The win and the loss grow together, and so does the chance of being liquidated. Our plays name the leverage at which similar past trades did best without getting wiped out too often.
Margin
Your margin is the money you put into a leveraged trade: your stake. Every result we show is on the margin, so +40% means $100 came back as $140, and −100% means the whole stake is gone.
Liquidated
Liquidation is the exchange closing your trade because the price moved far enough against you that your margin is nearly gone, and it keeps what is left. The higher the leverage, the smaller the move it takes: about 9.5% against you at 10×, about 4.5% at 20×. Every play shows how often similar past trades were liquidated; the best plays keep that to 1 in 20 or less.
Hold
The hold is how long the trade stays open: 1 day, 7 days or 30 days. Every number on a play is for closing the trade at the end of its hold, unless a take-profit closed it sooner.
Potential
The potential is the gain similar past trades reached at some point while they were open, with how many of them touched it: "7 in 10 reached +18%". Prices rise and fall within a hold, so a trade often touches a bigger gain than it closes with. A take-profit order at that gain locks it in when it comes.
Typical result
The typical result is the middle outcome of similar past trades, closed at the end of the hold: half of them did better and half did worse. It is not an average, so one lucky trade cannot inflate it.
Take-profit
A take-profit is an order you set when you open the trade: once the price reaches it, the exchange closes the trade in profit by itself. It is how you cash the potential instead of watching it fade.
Stop-loss
A stop-loss closes the trade by itself once it is down by a set amount. You lose that much and keep the rest of your margin, instead of riding the trade into a liquidation.
Earned ✓ · Not proven ◇
A pattern can look great on the past it was found in and still be luck. So every call is tested again on data it never saw. ✓ Earned means calls like it were right more often than chance there, with the count shown ("right 34 vs 26"). ◇ Not proven means it has not passed that test yet: a smaller bet, or none.
Degen plays
Degen plays are the riskier plays: higher leverage on coins worth $100M or more, liquidated in up to 1 in 4 similar past trades, for a bigger upside. They are labelled 🎲 so you always know which is which. Only bet money you can afford to lose on them.
Perps and funding
Perpetual futures (perps) are the contracts most exchanges use for long and short trades with leverage. They never expire. To keep their price near the coin's, longs and shorts pay each other a small amount every few hours, called funding: when most traders are long, longs pay.
Unlock
Many coins keep part of their supply locked for the team and early investors and release it on set dates. On an unlock day more coins can hit the market. The calendar lists them with what the price did after that coin's past unlocks.
Listing
A listing is a coin starting to trade on a big exchange, often with a jump in attention. The calendar and the listings page show what the price did after past listings.
Then look a bit deeper
- History: every play we posted on X, scored against what the price did, misses included.
- Track record: how often our calls were right, on data they had never seen.
- The Lab: every test we run every night, and what failed.
- Calendar: unlocks, listings and the Fed, with what past ones did to the price.
Past patterns, not promises · not financial advice · trading with leverage can lose all of the money put in