The whole series told you to set a stop-loss at your invalidation level. This part covers the uncomfortable detail nobody mentions: a stop-loss is not a guaranteed exit price. On most perps venues, including ApeX Omni, a triggered stop is a market order, so in a fast or gapping market it fills at the best available price, which can be well past your stop. The order type you choose, and the trigger price you set it on, is the difference between protection and a nasty surprise. This piece explains the order types you actually have, the one tradeoff you can never escape, and how to place the stop from earlier in the series so it does its job.

Order Types Explained: Make Your Stop-Loss Protect You

A perpetual does not have one price, it has three. The last price is what you see on the chart and what fills your orders. The index price is the fair spot value, drawn from several exchanges, and it drives funding. The mark price is a smoothed fair value, and it is the one that calculates your unrealised profit, your margin, and your liquidation. Confusing them is why traders think their profit vanished or their liquidation was rigged. This piece separates the three, explains the basis that connects them, and shows why the number that closes your position is deliberately not the number flashing on the tape.

Mark Price vs Index vs Last Price, and Basis Explained

A funding rate is a small payment that long and short traders exchange directly with each other, on a schedule, to keep a perpetual contract's price tethered to spot. It is not a fee the exchange keeps. It is also the quiet way a correct directional read still loses money: hold a position through enough funding and the drift can outweigh the move you got right. This piece explains what funding is, why it exists, walks the cost through real numbers, and debunks the most seductive myth in perps trading - that collecting funding is free money.

Funding Rates Explained: The Real Cost of a Perp

Leverage does not raise your expected return - it scales your profit, your loss, and the odds of being force-closed by the same factor. On a perpetuals exchange your liquidation price is the level where the platform closes your position because your equity can no longer cover the maintenance margin, and at high leverage that price can sit inside the stop-loss you carefully set. This piece explains leverage, margin, and liquidation honestly, walks a real trade through the numbers, debunks the "I was liquidated on a wick" complaint with how mark price actually works, and shows what the regulators found about who wins and loses on leverage.
The previous part of this series taught you to set a stop at your invalidation level and to risk a small, fixed slice of your account per trade. It ended on a clean promise: put your stop where the read is wrong, size the position so a loss costs 1% to 2%, and one bad trade cannot end you.

Tag: Perpetuals

Order Types Explained: Make Your Stop-Loss Protect You

Mark Price vs Index vs Last Price, and Basis Explained

Funding Rates Explained: The Real Cost of a Perp

Liquidation Price and Leverage on Perps, Explained