2026-09-05

Isolated or cross: what a liquidation is allowed to reach

It is one toggle on the order panel and it decides the worst case. Isolated fences the damage to one position. Cross lets the whole futures account defend that position — and lets a liquidation reach the whole futures account. Same screen, two different risks.

Isolated

Only the margin you assigned to that position is at stake. If price runs far enough against you, the position closes, that margin is gone, and everything else in the futures account is untouched — other positions included.

The cost of that fence is that the position defends itself with what it has. Nothing else comes to help, so it liquidates sooner than the same position would in cross.

Cross

The whole collateral of the futures account backs the position. Unrealised losses draw on the free balance, so the position survives a much larger move before the liquidation price is reached.

And that is exactly the risk. If it is finally liquidated, the loss is not fenced: it reaches everything sitting in the futures account. One bad position in cross can take the balance that three good ones built.

The practical difference nobody mentions

You can only add or remove margin on an isolated position. That is what the button does: it moves collateral into or out of that specific fence, and it is how you push a liquidation price further away without closing anything.

In cross there is no such button, because there is no fence to move margin into — the way you give a cross position more room is to fund the futures account itself. Different action, same intent, and worth knowing before the moment you need it.

How to choose

• Choose before opening. Switching with a position already open is not always accepted, and finding that out mid-move is the wrong time.
• Several positions at once → isolated, unless you mean for them to share a fate. In cross they do share it, whether or not that was the plan.
• Cross does not reduce risk, it relocates it. It trades "this position dies early" for "everything dies together, later". Whether that is a good trade depends on size, and size is the only real control you have.
• The liquidation price on the position is the number that answers all of this — it already accounts for the mode you picked. Read it before you confirm, and read it again after you add margin.

Measured on 2026-09-05. What actually settles a liquidation is the mark price, not the chart — see The price on the chart is not the price that liquidates you. Nothing here is investment advice; read the Risk Disclosure.

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