Protecting Your Position: SL/TP Configuration
Cross-liquidation protection in two clicks. Set stop-losses and take-profits that protect both legs of your DN position.
The biggest risk in delta-neutral trading isn't the market moving against you — it's one leg getting liquidated while the other stays open. That's what SL/TP protection prevents.
A delta-neutral position is only neutral while both legs are alive. The moment one side gets liquidated, you are no longer neutral. You are holding a naked directional position at exactly the wrong moment, in a market that just moved hard enough to blow through a liquidation price. ArchiNeutral's SL/TP system is designed to prevent that scenario entirely, coordinating protection across both DEXs so that neither leg is ever left exposed.
Why Cross-Liquidation Protection Matters
In a delta-neutral position, your long and short legs protect each other. The long profits as price rises; the short profits as price falls. Together, they offset. That balance is the entire premise.
But perpetual positions carry liquidation risk. Each leg has a price at which the exchange force-closes it. If your short gets liquidated during a sharp upside spike, you are suddenly holding a naked long with no hedge. When price reverses — as it often does after a spike — that naked long starts losing. You go from a hedged position to an unhedged loss.
The same applies in reverse. A sharp downside move that liquidates your long leaves your short open. The short was profitable during the drop, but now you hold it unhedged through whatever comes next.
Standard stop-losses only protect against a leg's own liquidation. Cross-liquidation protection goes further: it closes one leg when the other is approaching its liquidation price, so the two legs always exit together or not at all. In practice, this means your TP on the long is not set based on the long's profit target — it's set based on where the short would get liquidated. You are protecting each leg from the other's failure.
Setting this up manually is one of the hardest parts of delta-neutral trading. You need to calculate liquidation prices on both DEXs, determine safe trigger levels, and place four separate orders. Then you need to update all four orders whenever your position changes. ArchiNeutral handles this in a single form.
How ArchiNeutral's SL/TP Works
You set one parameter: your safety margin percentage. From that single input, the system calculates all four trigger prices and places all four orders on both DEXs simultaneously.
The four orders are:
SL Long — Closes your long before it reaches its own liquidation price. This is a standard stop-loss, but the trigger level is calculated precisely from your current liquidation price and safety margin.
TP Long — Closes your long when the short is approaching its liquidation price. This is the cross-protection order. If price moves up far enough that your short is at risk, the TP Long fires first, closing both legs in a controlled exit rather than letting the short get forced out.
SL Short — Closes your short before it reaches its own liquidation price. The mirror of SL Long on the other side.
TP Short — Closes your short when the long is approaching its liquidation price. If price falls far enough that your long is at risk, TP Short fires first.
The result: for any significant price move in either direction, at least one protective order fires before any liquidation event. You see exactly which prices those are before you confirm.
Take-profit orders are always placed as limit orders — zero slippage on execution. Stop-loss orders default to market orders for guaranteed exit, though you can switch to stop-limit execution if monitoring is enabled (more on this below).
Choosing Your Safety Margin
The safety margin controls how far from each liquidation price your triggers are set. It is expressed as a percentage of the distance to liquidation.
A higher margin places your triggers further from the liquidation price. Your orders fire sooner, with more buffer. The tradeoff is that the position exits earlier in a move that might have reversed.
A lower margin gives the position more room to move before a trigger fires. Your orders sit closer to the actual liquidation price, which means you extract more value from the position before an exit — but you are also closer to the edge if the move is fast.
The UI shows a risk indicator as you adjust:
- Below 3% — flagged as risky. Triggers sit very close to liquidation, leaving little room for fast moves or execution delays.
- 3% to 10% — the recommended range. Enough buffer for reliable execution while keeping exits reasonably tight.
- Above 10% — conservative. More buffer than most positions need, but appropriate for highly volatile assets or low-leverage setups.
The slider dynamically caps at the maximum viable margin for your position. If the computed maximum falls below 25%, the slider adjusts to reflect this constraint — you cannot set a margin that would place a trigger on the wrong side of the current price. If a position has very high leverage or if the gap between liquidation and current price is small, the maximum will be lower.
The recommended range is 5–15%, depending on your leverage and the current volatility of the asset. Higher leverage means liquidation prices are closer to the current price, so a given safety margin represents a smaller absolute dollar distance. In high-volatility environments, a tighter margin means a routine price swing could trigger an exit. In quieter conditions, a lower margin is more reasonable.
SL Execution Type
By default, stop-losses are placed as market orders. When triggered, they execute immediately at the best available price. This guarantees exit but may include slippage on fast-moving markets.
If your plan includes monitoring, you unlock a second option: stop-limit orders. A stop-limit places a limit order at a defined buffer from the trigger price instead of executing at market. This means the order will only fill at or better than the limit price — no slippage. The tradeoff is that if the market gaps through your limit price, the order may not fill at all.
This is where the SL Safety Net comes in. When monitoring is active and you've chosen stop-limit execution, the monitoring system watches for scenarios where the trigger price has been breached but the order hasn't filled. If that happens, it waits a configurable delay (default 30 seconds) before force-closing the position with a market order. You get the precision of a limit order with a fallback that prevents the position from staying open indefinitely. The SL Safety Net delay is configured in the Monitoring setup.
Buffer percent
The buffer percent (default 0.3%) controls the gap between the trigger price and the limit price.
- 0.1% to 0.5% — tight. Better fill price but higher risk of the order not executing if the move is fast.
- 0.5% to 2% — recommended. Enough room for execution on most markets.
- Above 2% — conservative. The order will almost certainly fill, but at a potentially worse price.
Stop-limit SL is an advanced option. If you're unsure, use market stop-losses — they always execute.
Degen TP Offset
For experienced traders who want to give their positions more breathing room, the Degen TP Offset shifts your take-profit prices further from the current price.
By default, your TP triggers are calculated based on the opposite leg's liquidation price minus the safety margin. The degen offset adds an additional percentage on top — pushing TP Long higher and TP Short lower.
The effect: your position can absorb a larger move before the take-profit fires. The protection is still there, but it activates later in the move. This makes sense when you're running a position on a volatile asset and want to avoid exits on moves that might reverse before reaching liquidation.
The offset range is 0.1% to 5%. The stop-losses are not affected — only the take-profits shift. The cross-liquidation protection from SL orders remains unchanged.
Enable this from the toggle in the SL/TP configurator. The preview updates in real time to show where the shifted TPs would sit compared to the standard positions.
Reading the SL/TP Preview
As you adjust the safety margin, the configurator displays a real-time price preview showing all four trigger prices for both the long and short legs. The preview updates instantly — no need to confirm before seeing the effect.
For a position on ETH, it might read:
- Long: TP $3,640 / SL $2,180
- Short: TP $2,200 / SL $3,620
If you enable the Degen TP Offset, the preview updates to show the shifted values alongside the standard positions, so you can see exactly how much room the offset adds.
Before confirming, verify that:
- All four prices sit on the correct side of the current market price
- The trigger prices provide enough buffer from the liquidation levels
- If using degen offset, the shifted TPs still make sense for your risk tolerance
The summary also confirms that both DEXs will receive orders simultaneously. There is no partial placement; either all four orders go out or none do.
When to Update SL/TP
SL/TP orders are calculated from your position's liquidation prices at the moment you place them. If the position changes, the liquidation prices change, and your existing orders may no longer provide the protection you intended.
Update your SL/TP after:
Adding to your position. Increasing the size on either leg changes the margin requirements and shifts the liquidation prices. Orders placed before the addition are now based on stale levels.
Adding margin to either leg. Adding collateral moves the liquidation price further away. Your original SL/TP may now be unnecessarily tight — you could afford a wider margin and give the position more room to operate.
Noticing shifted liquidation prices from funding accrual. On some DEXs, accumulated funding fees can gradually erode your margin and move your liquidation price closer to the current price. This is a slow process, but on long-duration positions it is worth checking.
To update, open the SL/TP configurator on your active position, enter your safety margin again, review the new trigger prices, and place the updated orders. The previous orders are cancelled and replaced. The process takes the same amount of time as the initial setup.
What's Next
SL/TP protection covers the scenario where the market moves quickly and decisively in one direction. It closes your position before liquidation can occur and prevents the asymmetric loss of holding a naked leg.
For ongoing monitoring — funding rate flips, gradual imbalance between legs, or conditions that deteriorate slowly over time — set up Telegram Alerts. Alerts catch the situations that SL/TP does not: the slow changes that unfold over hours or days rather than minutes.
Together, SL/TP and Telegram Alerts cover both the acute and the gradual risk vectors in a delta-neutral position. Set both up when you open a position and you have a complete protection layer.
This guide is part of the ArchiNeutral Guide Series.