5 perps settings that would have saved you on October 10

What happened on 10 October

A tariff headline hit a market full of leverage. Order books thinned out, market makers pulled liquidity, some exchange APIs stopped working, and liquidations fed more liquidations. Most trackers counted around $19 billion of liquidated positions in about a day, the largest on record, and more than a million accounts were hit. About half of it happened on Hyperliquid.

Experienced traders lost too. The White Whale, a well-known trader, wrote a public debrief after losing about $62 million that day. Unipcs wrote about the biggest one-day loss of their career "due to systemic failures on the biggest exchanges." Their posts, and trader Cred's list of what not to do after a big move, are the basis of this list.

1. Isolated margin, always

In cross margin, your whole account backs every position, so one bad trade can drain the rest. In isolated margin, only the margin you put into that trade can be lost. On 10 October, accounts in cross margin lost positions they had not even been watching.

2. Put the liquidation price beyond the worst wick, not the chart

ETH dropped more than $1,000 in minutes on some venues. Before you open a trade, look at the liquidation price the exchange shows and compare it with the biggest wick of the past year, not with your stop. If a repeat of that wick would liquidate you, lower the leverage until it would not.

3. Know what auto-deleveraging (ADL) is

When a liquidated account goes below zero and the exchange cannot close it in the market, it closes positions on the winning side instead. On Hyperliquid, winners are ranked by (mark price / entry price) times (position size / account value), so the most profitable, most leveraged positions go first, at the previous mark price. On 10 October, tens of thousands of accounts on Hyperliquid, Binance and Bybit had profitable positions closed this way, some of them hedges, which left the other leg open. If you hedge with perps, check the ADL indicator on your position and take profit on hedges in a crash instead of assuming they will stay open.

4. Do not keep all your collateral on the exchange you trade on

When APIs and withdrawals stall, you cannot add margin or move funds. Keep only the margin you need on the exchange and the rest in your own wallet, so a frozen exchange cannot take everything.

5. No new leverage for 24 hours after a big loss

Cred's list of the worst impulses after a big move: revenge short, oversized buy, and trying to make it all back the same day. Unipcs wrote the same after the crash: shut it down, step away, do not open new leverage. Write the rule down before you need it.

Meme coins have no perps for most of their life, but the same rules apply to size: see how to trade meme coins and DCA.

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Not financial advice. Numbers are measurements of past tokens and calls; meme coins are extremely risky and most go to zero.