Reading Signals
Signals lists where two exchanges are apart on a price by more than it costs to trade both sides, on spot, perpetuals, and futures and options.
Three pages
Signals has a page for each market, as the indexes do:
- Spot: Price gaps between exchanges, after fees.
- Perpetuals: Funding spreads and price gaps.
- Futures & options: Futures spreads and options priced apart.
Each reads every exchange of its kind while it’s open, whichever you have on; Only exchanges I use reads only yours.
Your amount and your fees
Over the list, Amount (USD) on spot is what you’d spend on the cheaper exchange, and Each leg (USD) on perpetuals the size of each side, in the currency you chose in Settings. Taker fees: Standard takes each exchange’s fee at its entry tier, My tiers the tiers you’ve set in a coin page’s Trade simulator. A gap counts only if it’s still there after both exchanges’ fees.
Reading a row
On spot, After fees is the gap at the best prices, less both fees. Goes to is how much can go through before the gap is used up, walking both order books, and At $10K what your amount makes: the list is sorted by it, and its top 10 are walked about every minute. Open for says how long the gap has been open.
On perpetuals, a funding spread trade is short where funding pays shorts most and long where it costs longs least: its spread now beside the same over seven days, and a day’s funding after both fees.
The flags
- Standing: open the whole 10 minutes its line covers. A gap open that long usually has a reason that stops traders closing it: look for one first.
- New: opened since the page began reading. Nothing is kept between visits.
- Thin: one of the two markets traded under $100K in the last 24 hours. Listed after the others, never hidden.
Show narrows the list to New or Standing gaps.
What it isn’t
A signal says where prices are apart, not which way they’ll go, and it isn’t advice: a gap can close before an order reaches it. Alerts can tell you when a new one opens.
On the site
Related articles
- Get alerts for new gaps
Signals can tell you with your browser’s own notification when a new gap opens after fees, while its page is open. Most phones’ browsers show none.
- Set your own fee tiers
Tell the Trade simulator your trading volume on each exchange and it takes fees at your tier. Signals and the spot scoreboard can use the same tiers.
- How the exchanges are ranked
The scoreboards rank every exchange against the others on the markets they share: how often each has the best price, how far behind it usually is, and its funding.
From the blog
- Crypto arbitrage: why most price gaps vanish after fees
When one exchange's bid is above another's ask, buying on one and selling on the other keeps the gap. Fees take most of them; how to find the ones left.
- Funding rate arbitrage: how long to earn back the fees
Short where funding pays most and long where it costs least: how many days of funding it takes to earn back both fees and crossing both books.
Still stuck?
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