Leverage & Base Price

Raising leverage does not make the grid trade bigger. Grid size already fixes the notional at each level. What leverage changes is how much of your balance is locked as margin: the same ladder that needs 1,000 USDT at 1× needs 200 USDT at 5×.

The other side of that trade is the liquidation distance. At 1× a long position survives almost any drawdown; at 10× roughly a 10% adverse move wipes it out — and a grid is specifically designed to keep buying into that move.

• 1× — the honest default. Capital equals notional; nothing can be liquidated. Correct for spot and for any grid you intend to leave unattended.
• 2–3× — a reasonable efficiency gain while keeping the liquidation point well outside the ladder's coverage.
• 5×+ — only with a stop loss armed, a shallow ladder and active supervision. Combining high leverage with a martingale size curve is how accounts are lost.

A custom base is how you pre-position. Setting it above the market on a long grid means the first rungs are already below price and will fill immediately; setting it below the market means the grid waits for a pullback before it engages at all.

Before the symbol streams a live price, the ladder preview anchors on an illustrative base so the shape is still meaningful. Every ratio, size, order count and capital figure is already exact — only the printed prices rescale once the real price arrives. The expanded plan says so explicitly when it is showing a placeholder.

• 1.Capital Allocation — How leverage enters the minimum-capital formula
• 2.Stop Loss — Bounding loss before liquidation does it for you
• 3.Reading the Ladder Plan — Where the base and break-even lines appear