What's the difference between an order and a smart position?

Altrady gives you two ways to trade: place a single order yourself, or set up a smart position that manages the whole trade for you. Knowing which is which clears up most of the early confusion about the trading terminal.

An order is a single buy or sell

The order form at the top of the Trading widget places one order at a time: a buy or a sell. Whether that order is an entry or an exit depends on what you already hold. A buy that opens a position is an entry; a sell that closes it is an exit. The same order types do both, so the form is not only for getting in.

Altrady gives you more order types than most exchanges: Market, Limit, Stop, Stop Limit, OCO, Trailing, and Ladder (which splits one order across several prices). Each is simply a different way to decide the price or the trigger for that one order. Once it fills, nothing else happens on its own: any exit is a separate order you place yourself. See How do I place a market, limit, or stop order in Altrady? for how each one works.

A smart position sets up the whole trade at once

A smart position is Altrady’s own feature, not something the exchange provides. Instead of placing orders one at a time, you set the entry, the take-profit, and the stop loss together in a single ticket, and Altrady manages the exits for you once the entry fills. The take-profit can be a ladder of several targets, and the stop loss can move to break even or trail price as those targets fill.

This is the part an exchange leaves to you: with a smart position, your exits are already in place the moment you are in the trade. See How do I set up a smart position with take profit and stop loss? to build one.

Which one fits

Place a single order when you just want to get in or out and you will handle the other side yourself. Use a smart position when you want your take-profit and stop loss set and managed from the start. You can always add protection to a position after the fact, but a smart position saves you doing it by hand.

Still stuck?

If you are not sure which route a screen is putting you on, reach out through the in-app support chat and we will walk through it with you.