Liquidation and risk

On spot, a bad trade leaves you holding a cheaper coin. On a perp, the exchange closes the trade for you when your collateral no longer covers the loss. That is liquidation, and it is the main thing that separates this from spot trading.

Your margin is the deposit backing the position (Notional / Leverage in the ticket's summary rows). As the price moves against you, unrealised loss eats that margin. When what is left falls to the maintenance margin, the position is force-closed. You do not get a margin call, and you do not get to wait for the recovery.

The mark price is what liquidates you, not the last trade

Every risk number on Swapmos is measured against mark price, not the last print in the trades tape.

• Mark price is Swapmos's fair value for the contract. It is anchored to the index price, which is a volume-weighted average of the asset across major spot venues.
• The index has guards against a single bad feed: a source more than 5% off the median is capped at that 5%, the median replaces the average if several sources are off, and a source silent for over 10 seconds is dropped.
• Unrealised PnL is also marked this way: position quantity x (mark price - average entry). That is the uPnL column in Positions.
• Stop, take profit and stop loss triggers on Swapmos all use MARK_PRICE. It is the only trigger type Swapmos supports, so a wick on one exchange should not by itself take you out.

Reading the liquidation price

There are two liquidation figures in the app, and they mean different things.

Before you open: the ticket's "Liq. price" row. This is an estimate computed from the ticket alone. Long: price x (1 - 1/leverage + maintenance margin rate). Short: price x (1 + 1/leverage - maintenance margin rate). It ignores any position you already hold and the rest of your cross collateral, so treat it as a sanity check on your leverage choice, not as the number the exchange will use. It is always shown in red.

After you open: the "Liq." column in Positions. This is est_liq_price from the exchange, refreshed every 5 seconds, in both the terminal's Positions tab and the Positions tab on /account. It reflects your whole account. An em dash there means the exchange has not returned a price for that position.

Two things people get wrong:

• The distance is roughly the inverse of your leverage. At 10x, about 10% against you. At 50x, about 2%. At 100x, about 1%. Maintenance margin adds a fraction of a percent, not a cushion.
• The liquidation price is not fixed at entry. It moves closer when funding payments and fees drain your balance, when you withdraw, or when another position in cross margin loses. It moves further away when you deposit.

Leverage in Settings is account-wide. Changing it there applies to every open position, not just your next one, which is exactly what the warning under those buttons says.

Cross and isolated

The Cross / Isolated toggle sits at the top left of the ticket. On mount it is overwritten with your account's real mode, and a change is only sent to the exchange when you submit an order.

In cross, your whole USDC balance backs every position, so a losing trade in one market pulls the liquidation price of the others closer. Swapmos has no control for adding margin to a single isolated position, so on isolated your practical lever is reducing the position itself.

The warnings you get

Swapmos does not push margin-call notifications, so the bell in the top bar derives them from the data the terminal already polls.

• A position within 5% of its estimated liquidation price is pinned into "Needs attention" as a warning. Within 2% it is marked critical and the bell badge turns red.
• The entry reads like "BTC is 3.2% from liquidation", with the current mark against the estimated liquidation price.
• Between 5% and 12% the app tracks the position internally but shows nothing, so the bell is not constantly amber.
• These alerts are advisory. The exchange liquidates on its own account-wide calculation, which can trigger earlier than any single position's number suggests. There is no account health bar or margin-ratio readout anywhere in the app.

What to do when you are close

1. 1Add collateral. "Add funds" on the ticket, or Deposit on /account. This is two on-chain transactions and the exchange credits from the on-chain event, so the app waits 8 seconds before refreshing balances. It is not a rescue during a fast move. Fund the account before you need to.
2. 2Reduce the position. There is no Close button on any Positions row. Open the ticket, tick Reduce only, choose the opposite side (Short to cut a long), and size it. With Reduce only on, the percentage slider and the 25/50/75/100% buttons size against your open position, and the size hint switches to "N open". Reduce only skips the "Add funds" gate, so you can still close with zero free balance.
3. 3Place the stop when you open, not later. Tick TP/SL in the ticket and set a Stop loss price, or use the 5% / 10% / 25% shortcuts. Two things to know: the bracket is sent as a separate call after the entry fills, so if you see the toast "Entry placed, TP/SL rejected" you have a position and no stop; and brackets and stop entries are algo orders, so they do not appear in the Open orders tab and cannot be cancelled from there.
4. 4Use less leverage. The slider turns red from 50x up. Each market has its own ceiling (BTC 100x, many equity markets 10x), and the published ceiling only holds up to a certain position size, above which the effective maximum falls.
5. 5Do not assume signing out protects you. Revoking the trading key removes the signing key from this browser. It does not cancel orders and does not close positions, and they can still be liquidated while you are signed out. Disconnecting the wallet does the same nothing.

After a liquidation

The bell posts a critical entry reading "BTC position liquidated", with the quantity closed, the transfer price it was closed at, and the liquidator fee in USDC. The position disappears from Positions, and the closed row with its realised PnL is under the Closed tab on /account.

A liquidation is more expensive than closing yourself. You pay the liquidator fee on top of normal trading fees, and you have no say in the price.

The insurance fund

Part of what is taken in a liquidation goes to Swapmos's insurance fund. It is the pool that absorbs liquidations that close at worse than the bankruptcy price, so that other traders' balances are not clawed back to cover the shortfall. Every liquidation record carries the amount transferred to it.

Be clear about who it protects. The insurance fund backstops the exchange against bad debt. It does not stop your position being closed, does not refund you, and there is nothing to claim from it. Swapmos does not display its balance anywhere in the app.