Futures are a good choice for traders who want to benefit from short-term changes in price or protect themselves from negative price movements in their other investments.

Futures trading involves taking on risk and you can lose money. Trading on futures usually involves using leverage and trades are usually held for up to several months.

A future can be fixed maturity, meaning that it expires and settles on a fixed date, or it can be perpetual, meaning that it has no end date and continues without stopping. An exchange future is fixed maturity.

Leverage means that the trader puts down a smaller amount of funds to trade a larger position. The leveraged amount will be borrowed from Kraken. As the position size is larger than the initial investment, both gains and losses will be amplified, even from small price movements in the underlying asset.

When a buyer goes long it means that they will benefit if the price of the underlying asset goes up. When a buyer goes short. It means that they will benefit if the price of the underlying asset goes down.

You can calculate your profit or loss based on the leverage, the asset price, and whether you are going long or short.

There are many tools available to you to manage risk when trading futures. These include stop loss orders, watching your account balance to make sure you have enough funds to keep your position open, and understanding the fees you will be charged and how they impact your profit and loss.

You need to keep a certain amount of funds in your account to keep your position open. If your account balance falls below this your account will be automatically closed, or liquidated by the platform.