The Two Charts Explained
Top chart: prices
- When you click on a signal, the Spread History window opens with two charts. The top chart shows the actual prices of the asset on both exchanges — one line per exchange. This lets you see how prices move in real time and how closely the two exchanges track each other.
Bottom chart: the spread
- The bottom chart is the most important one — it shows the spread: the percentage difference between prices on the two exchanges. The shaded area represents the spread magnitude — the taller the area, the wider the price gap between exchanges. When the spread is above zero, Exchange B is more expensive; below zero, Exchange A is more expensive. The wider the area, the bigger the potential profit.
Hover over the top chart to see the exact prices on both exchanges and the spread at any point in time. This tooltip updates as you move your cursor, so you can explore the full history and understand how the spread was behaving at any moment.
What a Tradeable Spread Looks Like
Compare the spread chart: a good pair oscillates around 0%; a bad one drifts away and never returns.
Oscillates around 0% and keeps reverting — open wide, close tight, repeat.
Drifts one way and never returns — the spread won't close.
What Makes a Good Pair
It oscillates
A good trading pair has three properties you can see on the chart. First, the spread should oscillate — it regularly goes up and comes back down (or vice versa). This "breathing" pattern means the system can open a position when the spread is wide and close it when the spread narrows, capturing the difference as profit.
The swings clear the fees
Second, the oscillations should be large enough to cover fees. Every trade costs approximately 0.04–0.05% in taker fees, and you make four trades per cycle (buy + sell on each exchange). That means a full cycle costs about 0.20% in fees. The spread must swing by more than 0.20% for the trade to be profitable.
The swings are frequent
Third, the oscillations should be frequent. A spread that swings 2% once per week is less useful than one that swings 0.5% ten times per day. More cycles = more profit over time. Look at the bottom chart: if you see many up-and-down waves within the visible timeframe, that is a strong sign.
Beware of pseudo-pairs where the spread looks profitable on the chart but is structurally unreliable. When learning how to find arbitrage pairs crypto traders should always confirm that both legs are the same instrument type — a linear USDT-margined perp on one exchange and an inverse coin-margined contract on the other will show a phantom 0.3–0.5% gap that never closes, because the two contracts price differently by design. Different tick sizes or contract multipliers create the same illusion: if one venue quotes in $0.0001 ticks and the other in $0.01 ticks, the rounding noise alone can fake a tradable spread on low-priced coins. Solid crypto futures spread analysis means cross-checking contract specifications, settlement currency, and tick size before committing capital. A tradable crypto pair has matching contract mechanics on both legs — otherwise the spread is an artifact, not an opportunity.
Reading Chart Details
Zero-crossing markers
On the spread chart, colored markers appear at points where the spread crosses zero — indicating a direction change. Green markers show where the spread turned positive (Exchange B became more expensive), and red markers show where it turned negative. These help you quickly spot how often the spread flips direction.
Threshold lines
When backtest results are active, two horizontal dashed lines appear on the spread chart: a green line for the recommended open threshold and a red line for the close threshold. These help you visualize where trades would have been entered and exited based on historical data.
Crosshair and zoom
Hover over the price chart to see the exact prices on both exchanges and the current spread at any point in time. Use the time range to zoom in on recent activity or zoom out to see longer-term patterns. You can also drag the divider between the two charts to resize them.
Using the Backtest Panel
At the bottom of the chart window, you will see a panel with numbers: Upper, Lower, Δ, Cycles, and Est. Profit. This is the backtest — the system automatically analyzed the loaded spread history and found the best thresholds for opening and closing positions.
"Upper" (green dashed line on the chart) is the spread level at which a trade opens. "Lower" (red dashed line) is the level at which it closes. "Δ" is the spread you capture on each cycle, before fees. "Cycles" is how many times this pattern occurred in the loaded history. "Est. Profit" is the total profit across all cycles, after subtracting fees; hover over it to see the fees per cycle. When funding data is available, "Funding" shows what the position would have paid or received over the same window. The panel shows no win rate. Every simulated cycle opens at Upper and closes at Lower, so each one earns the same amount: they all win or all lose together, and a percentage would add nothing.
Use these numbers as a starting point when setting up a Trading Card. A pair with 10+ cycles spread across the whole window and a Δ well above the fees is a strong candidate. But remember: backtest results are based on past data — they show what would have happened, not what will happen. Always start with small position sizes.
Red Flags to Avoid
Lines that diverge and never converge
Not every spread with a high percentage is a good trade. If the top chart shows the two prices drifting apart and never coming back together, that is usually a permanent shift, such as a token delisting or a chain migration. The spread will not close, and you will be stuck in a losing position. A break caused by an event, such as news or a liquidation cascade, is different: it closes as the order book recovers. Spread Regimes shows how to tell the two apart.
A spread that never crosses zero
Watch out for pairs where the spread is always on one side (always positive or always negative) and never crosses zero. This can indicate structural differences between exchanges — different contract specifications, liquidity imbalances, or persistent funding rate gaps. These are harder to trade and can lead to unexpected losses.
Very low volume
Also be cautious with very low-volume coins. The chart may show beautiful spread patterns, but if there is not enough liquidity on the order book, your market orders will suffer slippage — you will get a worse price than expected, and the actual spread will be smaller than what the chart shows.
Funding interval mismatch
A subtle but costly red flag is a funding interval mismatch between the two legs. If Exchange A settles funding every 1 hour and Exchange B settles every 8 hours, the perpetual futures spread can carry a synthetic offset of 0.1–0.3% that looks like clean alpha on the chart but collapses the moment one of the legs hits its funding settlement. The spread "breathes" around the settlement clock rather than around real price dislocation, producing a false arbitrage signal — your backtest will show beautiful cycles that vanish in live trading because the entry threshold was crossed by an accounting event, not by a genuine inefficiency. Before trusting a pair, open both exchange pages and confirm funding cadence matches (both 1h, both 4h, or both 8h). Mixed-cadence pairs are technically tradable, but the strategy must explicitly model the offset.
Step-by-Step: From Chart to Trading Card
There are two main ways to create a trading card from a signal. Choose based on how much control you need.
Quick Start is the fastest path. Press the Run button on any signal card and you get a ready-to-run trading card: the open and close spreads come from the pair's backtest, with minimum order size and maximum available leverage. If the pair has no backtest yet, the close spread falls back to −30% of the open spread (open 0.30% → close −0.09%), so the card accepts giving back up to 30% of what it captured on entry. Treat that fallback as a placeholder and set your own close in the card's Lower field.
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① Find a signal with a spread above 0.3%.
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② Press Run — a trading card is created automatically.
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③ Review the card, then press Run to start trading.
The analytical path gives you more confidence. Open the chart first, review the backtest, and create a card with pre-filled thresholds.
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④ Click Spread History on the signal card to open the chart.
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⑤ Check the bottom chart: does the spread oscillate? Are the swings large and frequent?
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⑥ Review the backtest panel — look for 10+ cycles spread across the window and a Δ well above the fees.
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⑦ Select the recommended mode (Long / Short / Both) and press Run — a trading card is created with backtest values pre-filled. Review order size and leverage, then start trading.
You can also create a card manually from the Dashboard by pressing the + button. This gives you full control — you choose the symbol, exchanges, and configure every parameter yourself: open/close thresholds, order size, leverage, delays, and risk limits. Use this when you have a specific strategy in mind.
Whichever path you choose, start with a small order size to validate the pair in real conditions. Monitor for a few hours, then gradually increase the size once you gain confidence.