How to open a trading position on C-Trade?

If you’re new to trading on C-Trade, or trading in general, then you might be eager to learn how you can open a long or short position!

Going long or short is very easy, but you’ll want to make sure you do it the right way to not accidentally open a short position when you wanted to open a long position instead.

To summarise:

Long position: making a profit on a cryptocurrency increasing in value.

Short position: making a profit on a cryptocurrency decreasing in value.

Long position example:

When opening a position on C-Trade, you can choose to either use a limit or a market order. In this example we’ll use a limit buy order to open our long position.

Say Bitcoin is trading at $55,000 and I believe it’s going to go to $57,000. This means I would like to buy Bitcoin contracts, in order to speculate the market is going to increase.

1. First, you open the trading dashboard. BTCUSD is selected by default, if you wish to trade ETHUSD (Ethereum) instead, you can select the menu in the top left corner to do so.
   
2. Second, navigate to the menu on the top right. Select ‘Limit’.
   
3. Third, set the limit price at $55,000. At ‘quantity’, fill out how big of a position you would like to open your long with (in USD). In this example, we’ll go long with 2,500 contracts ($2,500).
   
   If you wish to do so with leverage, you can do so as well or learn more about this here first.
4. Fourth, we’re going to hit ‘buy’ as we’re looking to buy 2,500 contracts.

That’s it, you’re now in a long position for 2,500 contracts and can choose to ‘limit sell’ or ‘market sell’ this upon reaching a price of $57,000 per Bitcoin.

Short position example:

Say Bitcoin is trading at $55,000 and I believe it’s going to go to $52,000. This means I would like to sell Bitcoin contracts, in order to open a net selling position speculating the market is going to go down.

1. First, you open the trading dashboard. BTCUSD is selected by default, if you wish to trade ETHUSD (Ethereum) instead, you can select the menu in the top left corner to do so.
2. Second, navigate to the menu on the top right. Select ‘Limit’.
3. Third, set the limit price at $55,000. At ‘quantity’, fill out how big of a position you would like to open your short with (in USD). In this example, we’ll go short with 2,500 contracts ($2,500).
   If you wish to do so with leverage, you can do so as well or learn more about this here first.
4. Fourth, we’re going to hit ‘sell’ as we’re looking to sell 2,500 contracts.

That’s it, you’re now in a short position for 2,500 contracts and can choose to ‘limit buy’ or ‘market buy’ the same number of contracts back upon reaching a price of $52,000 per Bitcoin.