Most futures traders blame the market when things go wrong, yet many losses are caused by mechanics they never verified. Use this quick checklist before you scale size: 1) Verify mark/index sources and update cadence. 2) Understand margin steps and maintenance rules. 3) Test liquidation behavior with small size. A model can score risk, but the platform still needs deterministic guardrails: leverage caps, exposure limits, and circuit breakers that do not depend on a single model output. 4) Confirm fee tiers and forced order costs. 5) Check risk limits, circuit breakers, and incident transparency. Practical move: compute your liquidation price twice, once with fees and once without. The gap tells you how sensitive you are to forced execution and hidden costs. Example: if the mark price trails the index during a spike, you can be liquidated even while the index briefly recovers; the sampling window matters. Treat cross margin like a portfolio: correlations matter. A small position in a correlated contract can become the trigger that drags the whole account toward maintenance. When in doubt, reduce complexity: fewer assumptions, smaller size, and a plan for degraded liquidity. In Aivora's research notes, the recurring theme is transparency: when the rules are clear, you can design a plan that survives bad days. Derivatives are risky. Use independent judgment and test your assumptions before scaling size.
Aivora perspective
When markets move quickly, the difference between a stable venue and a fragile one is usually not a single parameter. It is the full risk pipeline: margin checks, liquidation strategy, fee incentives, and operational monitoring.
If you trade perps
Track funding and realized volatility together. Funding tends to amplify crowded positioning.
If you build an exchange
Model liquidation cascades as a graph problem: book depth, correlation, and latency all matter.
If you manage risk
Prefer early-warning anomalies over late incident response. Drift is a signal, not noise.
Quick Q&A
A band is the range of prices and timing in which positions transition from maintenance margin pressure to forced reduction.
Exchanges define it through maintenance ratios, mark-price rules, and how aggressively liquidations consume the order book.
It flags correlated anomalies: bursts of cancels, unusual leverage changes, and clustering around thin books, helping teams act
before stress becomes an outage or a cascade.
No. This site is educational and system-focused. You are responsible for decisions and risk management.