An overview of positions in Altrady
Positions are one of the core ideas in Altrady. A position groups your trades on a market so you can see how they add up: what you paid on average, where you break even, and how much you have made or lost across the whole trade, not just order by order.
This article explains what a position is, how Altrady’s positions relate to what your exchange shows, the two main types of position, and how each one is created. For managing, closing, or converting a position, see the links at the end.
What a position is
A position is a group of trades on one market that Altrady treats as a single unit for tracking and analysis. From that grouping, Altrady works out:
- Average entry price
- Break-even price
- Realised and unrealised profit or loss
- The amount still open
- Direction: long or short
On futures, Altrady also shows the data the exchange provides for the position: leverage, margin, and the liquidation price.
For what each of these figures means and how they move, see Understanding your position numbers.
A position stays open for as long as you still hold an amount on that market (spot), or the exchange reports an open amount (futures), or until it is manually closed.
How Altrady’s positions relate to your exchange
Altrady builds a position from your trades. It does not copy a position from the exchange. That works differently on spot and futures, and the difference explains a lot of what you see.
On spot, your exchange has no concept of a position at all. It only tracks balances: how much of each coin you hold, and which orders have filled. Altrady creates the position itself by grouping the trades on that market, which is what makes an average entry, a break-even, and a round-trip profit or loss possible. It is also why a manual spot position is defined by its start date, and can end up holding the wrong trades if that date is off.
On futures, the exchange does use positions, but not the same way Altrady does. The exchange nets everything on a market into a single position per side. Altrady can track several separate positions on the same market, allowing tracking of analytics separately for each. So Altrady does not mirror the exchange’s position; it builds its own from your trades, while using the open-position data the exchange provides: the open amount, liquidation price, margin type, and leverage.
Because Altrady builds futures positions from trades, it needs those trades to be complete. When you first connect a live futures exchange, the exchange sends only a small window of recent orders and trades, along with your current open-position data. If some of the trades behind your open position fall outside that window, Altrady cannot reconstruct the position exactly. The Position Info widget then shows an error, because the amount left on the position Altrady built does not match the open amount the exchange reports. Importing the missing trades is the only way to fix this.
For more on how Altrady handles the exchange’s own futures position, see the Futures and leverage articles.
The two types of position
Altrady has two main types: Manual and Smart. The difference is what the position does.
Manual is analytics only. It records and analyses your trades; it does not place or manage orders. A manual position is defined by its start date and the trades that fall after it (for a closed one, up to its end date). It is labelled Spot or Futures depending on the market. Those labels are not separate types; they just tell you which kind of market it is on.
Because a manual position is defined by its start date, changing that date changes which trades it contains, and with them its analytics, its open amount, and the amount used to close it. If a manual position’s figures look wrong, check the start date first.
Smart does everything Manual does and also manages orders for you: it places entries, adds and updates take-profit orders as entries fill, tracks stop loss and trailing orders, and closes the position when your conditions are met.
There are several ways to create a smart position. Placing a smart order in the trading widget is the usual one. The DCA position tool creates a smart position with its entries planned in advance (see How do I create a DCA position?). A Signal Bot or Grid Bot creates one too, labelled Signal Bot or Grid Bot respectively, and its positions also feed the bot’s own analytics. However it is created, it is a smart position with the full set of controls.
Position icons
Each type carries a small icon on the position row and the controls bar, with a tooltip naming the type:
| Icon | Position type |
|---|---|
| Calendar | Manual position on a Spot market |
| Money bag | Manual position on a Futures market |
| Lightning bolt | Smart position |
| Signal | Signal Bot position |
| Grid | Grid Bot position |
Smart and Manual at a glance
| Smart position (however created) | Manual position (labelled Spot or Futures) | |
|---|---|---|
| Manages orders? | Yes. Places and updates entries, take-profits and stops, and closes the position | No. Analytics only |
| Defined by | Its linked orders | Its start date, and the trades after it |
| How it is created | By placing a smart order, the DCA position tool, or a bot | Manually, automatically from new trades on a market with a previous position, or from imported trades |
| Which controls are available? | All of them | Close only. Altrady offers to convert it to Smart for anything else |
| Can it be marked as closed? | No. Convert it to Manual first | Yes |
How positions are created
Spot. A Smart position is created when you place a smart order. A manual spot position is created when you build one from existing trades, when Altrady detects new trades on a market that has had a position before, or when you confirm a position for imported trades.
If you place a regular (non-smart) order while a Smart or bot position is already open on that market, a manual Spot position is not created automatically, even if the market has had a position before.
Futures. A futures position is created automatically whenever the exchange reports an open amount, whether the trades were placed in Altrady, on the exchange, or elsewhere. Place a smart order and Altrady creates a Smart futures position; place a regular order (in Altrady or on the exchange) and it creates a manual Futures position.
Altrady creates a futures position whenever the exchange reports an open amount and no position exists for it. That one rule explains two things you might notice: deleting a Smart futures position while an amount is still open can leave a manual Futures position behind, and marking a futures position as closed while an amount is still open creates a new one. See How do I close, exit, or cancel a position?.
Long and short positions
Positions can be long or short on both spot and futures. A long buys first and sells later; a short sells first and buys back.
Shorting on spot is a normal strategy, not only a futures one: a long-term holder might sell into strength meaning to buy back lower, and Altrady tracks that as a short so you see the round-trip profit or loss.
A spot short is sized in the quote currency you received when you sold, not the base currency. Every other case (spot longs, and futures longs and shorts) is sized in the base currency, which affects the amount used to close it. See How do spot short positions work?.
If you see a short position on a spot market that you did not set out to open, it usually is not a bug, and the long-and-short logic above is why Altrady reads it that way. The common causes are a manual position whose start date is wrong, so it includes trades it should not; an exit order left behind by a smart position that closed unexpectedly; or an exit order you placed on the market instead of editing the position it belonged to. See Why does my position look wrong? to check and fix each.
Where positions appear
Different parts of Altrady show different levels of detail:
| Where | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Account Dashboard | A brief list of open and recently closed positions |
| My Positions | The full list of open and closed positions, with basic analytics |
| Position Info widget | Full analytics, the trade breakdown, and amounts invested for the currently selected market |
| Trading widget | The position controls, for managing a Smart position |
| Bot dashboards | Bot-specific analytics |
New accounts and “no positions” messages
When you first set up an account you may see a message that you have no open positions. That is normal. Spot positions appear once trades occur or you create one; futures positions appear once the exchange reports an open amount. Right after connecting, Altrady may not have your full history if the exchange provides only limited history. This does not affect your ability to trade, and your positions fill in as soon as Altrady has enough data.
Related articles
- Viewing and managing your open positions and orders: where to find positions and how to read them.
- Understanding your position numbers: Invested, average entry, break-even, and net PnL.
- How do I close, exit, or cancel a position?: Close, partial close, and Mark as Closed.
- How do I set up a smart position with take profit and stop loss?: creating a Smart position.
- How do I create a DCA position?: a Smart position with its entries planned in advance.
- How do spot short positions work?.
Troubleshooting