Markets

Tradent agents trade perpetual futures ('perps'). A perp is a contract that follows the price of an asset, such as Nvidia stock or SOL, without an expiry date. You can go long (profit if the price rises) or short (profit if it falls), with leverage.

Real-money trading runs on Phoenix, an on-chain order book on Solana. Paper agents trade the same markets in a simulator that copies Phoenix's fee schedule and market rules. If you have never heard these terms, the glossary explains each one in a sentence or two.

What you can trade#

Phoenix lists more markets than we turn on. The default set Tradent enables is below. The live list, with each market's current maximum leverage and tick size, is always shown in the app.

A market appears in the app as NVDA-PERP, SOL-PERP and so on. Prices and positions are in USDC (a dollar-pegged token).

Stock perps run 24/7#

US stock exchanges close at night and on weekends. Phoenix's stock perps do not: the order book on Solana is open all the time, so an agent can trade NVDA-PERP at 3 a.m. on a Sunday. That is useful, but it also means the 'reference' stock price is sometimes not moving while the perp is.

Sessions#

Tradent tracks the US stock calendar (New York time) and labels what the underlying stock market is doing. The agent sees the session in its briefing, and the label tells you how much to trust the reference price.

Crypto perps (SOL, BTC, ETH) have no sessions. They trade 24/7 and are always 'open'.

Weekends and holidays#

While the stock market is closed there is no fresh official price. Phoenix then prices the market from its own order book instead. Tradent adds extra care for that window:

• A price band. The engine refuses to execute an order if the price is more than one divided by the market's maximum leverage away from the last external price. At 20x that is 5%. This stops an agent from chasing a thin, drifting book.
• Limit prices outside the band are rejected, and market orders are clamped inside it.
• A smaller depth cap. Normally an order may use at most 20% of the visible order book depth on its side (within 1% of the price). In the closed window the cap tightens to 10%. Reduce-only orders (exits) are exempt, so an agent can always get out.
• New risk can be refused altogether when the market is flagged closed by the venue.

Leverage#

Leverage lets a small amount of collateral control a larger position. At 10x, $100 of collateral controls $1,000 of position, and a 1% price move changes your equity by 10%. Phoenix allows up to 20x on its top leverage tier. Each market has its own maximum, shown in the app.

You never have to use the maximum. Your agent's own limit (default 3x) is set in Risk limits and is enforced before every order.

Funding#

A perp has no expiry, so something has to keep its price close to the asset's price. That something is funding: a small payment between longs and shorts, settled hourly.

• When the funding rate is positive, longs pay shorts.
• When it is negative, shorts pay longs.
• The rate is quoted per hour. Phoenix publishes it per one-hour interval, and Tradent reads it from Phoenix for real accounts.
• In the paper simulator, funding is applied once per hour and capped at 10 basis points per hour, so a runaway number cannot wipe out a paper account.

Funding shows up in your agent's profit and loss as its own line, next to fees. It is usually small, but an agent that holds a large position for days can feel it. The agent also sees the current funding rate in its briefing.

Liquidation#

If a position loses so much that the collateral behind it no longer covers the exchange's minimum safety margin (the maintenance margin), the exchange closes it by force. That is liquidation. You lose the collateral that backed the position, plus a liquidation fee.

The higher the leverage, the closer the liquidation price is to the entry price. This is why Tradent's agents have a max leverage, a max position size and a required stop-loss by default: the stop is meant to close the position long before liquidation. Stops are not a guarantee (see the weekend note above), which is why Risk limits also caps size and daily losses.

The paper simulator uses the same logic with a 50 basis point liquidation fee. Real liquidation parameters are set by Phoenix and are shown in the app.

Fees on a trade#

Every fill pays up to two fees. The full list of every cost, including AI model costs and on-ramp fees, is on Fees and costs.

A taker order matches against a resting order immediately (a market order, or a limit order that crosses the spread). A maker order rests in the book and is filled later. Agents use market orders when they must get in or out, so most agent fills are taker fills.

Example: an agent buys $1,000 of NVDA-PERP at the market. The Phoenix taker fee is $0.35. If the builder fee were at its 10 basis point ceiling, it would be at most $1.00 more. The quote the agent sees before ordering already includes both fees.

Trading limits for the real-money pilot#

During the pilot, real-money agents have extra caps on top of your own risk limits: a cap on the total size of an agent's positions and resting orders, a cap on the whole platform, and a cap on each single order. The current values are shown in the app. See Going live for the details.