The trading terminal
A complete guide to trading a vault from /trade
The /trade page mirrors the Hyperliquid app: chart and order book on the
left, the order ticket and your vault's capital on the right, and the
management tables (balances, positions, orders, TWAPs, history)
underneath.
Signing in
The order channel needs a credential:
- Default: sign in with the vault's manager wallet via the Sign in button. Orders are then authorized by your session — no wallet popup per order. The header shows a green Signed in pill.
- Bot key: for programmatic trading, mint a per-vault API key on Manage → Agent and run it in your own bot. A session driven by a bot key shows a Bot key pill in the header instead of Signed in, and Forget key drops back to wallet sign-in. Keys are minted for your external automation — the Agent tab never asks you to paste one back in.
Your connected wallet must be the vault's current on-chain manager — the gate re-checks this on every order, so a rotated or blocked manager loses access on the next request.
If the order API is unreachable, the ticket is replaced by a degraded
on-chain form that places and cancels orders directly through the vault
contract (managerTrade). Slower, but you are never locked out.
The manager cockpit also carries a standing On-chain panel (Manage → Trade → On-chain) — the same wallet-signed CoreWriter path, always available, leading with one-click Close and Cancel for getting out when the terminal or agent is down.
The ticket, top to bottom
Margin pills — [Cross] [20×] [Unified]
Per-market margin mode and leverage. Click either pill to open the editor; both are set together in one action.
- Margin mode is locked while a position is open on that market (an exchange rule).
- HIP-3 (builder-dex) markets are isolated-only — the pill locks to Isolated automatically.
- The Unified badge is informational: vault accounts pool spot USDC and perp margin as one collateral source, which is why "Available to trade" on a perp reads your full pooled balance.
Order types — Market | Limit | Pro ▾
| Type | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Market | aggressive IOC at the live price (slippage-bounded) |
| Limit | resting order; TIF selector offers GTC, IOC, and Post only |
| Pro → Stop Limit / Stop Market | standalone trigger that fires when price crosses the trigger against you |
| Pro → Take Limit / Take Market | trigger that fires when price crosses in your favour |
| Pro → TWAP | slices the size across a duration (one slice ~30s) |
One form, one button, always — the selected type replaces the ticket body.
Sizing
Size is entered in USDC or the base asset (dropdown on the field). The percentage slider sizes against your available balance, reserving the taker fee so a 100% order never exceeds it. Exchange minimum is $10 notional per order ($50 for a TWAP).
Spot sells are always sized in the base asset — you sell coins, and the USDC value shown is an estimate.
Reduce-only
Perp-only. A reduce-only order can shrink or close a position but never open or flip one. The standalone Stop/Take forms and TWAP carry their own reduce-only checkbox — for a stop, it is the difference between a protected exit (checked) and a stop-entry (unchecked).
Take profit / stop loss on fill
On market entries, tick Take profit / stop loss on fill and set either or both prices. The entry executes first; reduce-only market triggers are then placed automatically for the same size. If a trigger fails after the entry filled, you get a loud error toast and can set it from the position row instead.
Limit entries can't attach exits (the order-only gate has no grouped orders) — use the Pro Stop/Take forms once filled.
The numbers under the button
Liquidation price (estimate), order value, margin required (= value ÷ leverage on perps), live slippage estimate for market orders, and the fee row showing your actual maker/taker rate.
What trading costs you
Hyperliquid's fee. Your vault pays the standard exchange fee — 0.045% taker / 0.015% maker at the entry tier, stepping down as volume grows. The order ticket's fee row shows your actual live rate.
The HyperVaults builder fee. Orders routed through the trading gate carry an additional 0.01% (1 basis point) of traded notional, paid to the protocol. It drops with your vault's own volume:
| Vault's trailing 14-day volume | Builder fee |
|---|---|
| under $25M | 0.01% |
| $25M – $100M | 0.007% |
| over $100M | 0.005% |
Those thresholds deliberately match Hyperliquid's own tier boundaries, so
you cross both at the same moment. It is capped on-chain at 0.02% — your
vault approves that ceiling once at creation and it can never be raised.
It shows as builderFee on every fill, so you can audit it per trade.
Orders you place yourself through the on-chain fallback are not charged it.
Your vault is a separate Hyperliquid account
This is the cost most managers do not expect, and it is larger than our fee, so it is worth stating plainly.
Hyperliquid's volume tiers are per account, and your vault is its own account. That means:
- Your personal trading history does not carry over. However much you trade elsewhere, a new vault starts at the entry tier.
- Volume does not aggregate across your vaults. $200M through one wallet earns a better rate than $40M through each of five vaults.
So running a strategy through a vault can cost more in exchange fees than running the same strategy on your own account — before our builder fee is added. That is structural to how Hyperliquid prices accounts and we cannot change it.
What a vault buys you is access to other people's capital, fee collection, an immutable custody guarantee, and a verifiable track record. It does not buy you cheaper execution, and we would rather you knew that before you launch than discover it in your fill data.
Managing what's open
Positions tab — every open position across the native dex and
builder dexes, with an ISO badge on isolated ones. Per row:
- × market-closes the position (two clicks — the second confirms).
- Set opens an editor to place reduce-only TP/SL triggers at your prices, and — on isolated positions — to add or remove margin.
- Close All in the header flattens everything, one confirm.
Open Orders tab — all resting orders and triggers. Cancel per row, Cancel All in the header, and a pencil to modify a resting order's price/size inline. Note the exchange replaces a modified order — it re-lists under a new order id.
TWAP tab — running TWAPs with executed progress and elapsed/total runtime, and a Terminate button per row.
The ticket also shows a compact position card for the selected market with its own close button.
Spot specifics
- A spot buy requires the token to be enabled on the vault first. If it isn't, the ticket swaps the buy button for an inline Enable prompt (a one-time wallet transaction), then trading proceeds through the agent.
- Sells are never gated — they only ever acquire USDC.
- Spot markets have no trigger orders (an exchange limitation): the Pro menu offers TWAP only, and Reduce-only/leverage controls are absent.
HIP-3 (builder-dex) markets
Curated builder perps (stocks, commodities and similar synthetic markets) trade exactly like native perps with three differences:
- Isolated margin only — enforced by the exchange, locked in the UI.
- The unified account auto-funds builder-dex margin from your pooled balance; there is no manual transfer step.
- Books can be thin — prefer resting limits, and expect a market order into an empty book to come back with "Order could not immediately match against any resting orders" rather than a fill.