Before you can start trading derivatives contracts, you'll first need to deposit fiat funds into your Kraken account (if you have not already).
Once your Kraken account is funded, you will need to make sure you have a Multi-Collateral Derivatives collateral currency available to transfer to your derivatives wallet. If you funded using a currency which is not accepted as collateral on futures yet, you will need to sell that currency on the spot or convert it to a derivatives collateral currency using Instant buy.
If you have not launched derivatives and accepted the terms of service yet, make sure you do by following this guide. You can then transfer the collateral currency to your Derivatives wallet to use it as margin for your trade.
Once your Derivatives wallet is funded, you can use this guide to place your first order!
Note: Kraken Derivatives has numerous advanced trading options and order types. To help keep things simple, this article will cover the basic Market and Limit orders.
Select the Derivatives contract
First you will need to know what contract you would like to trade, for example buying a BTC perpetual contract or ETH perpetual contract. After you know which contract/s you’ll be trading, you can select them from the market selector near the top left corner.
After clicking, a market selector dialog will pop-up where you will be able to select the 'Futures' tab to view all futures contracts.
From here you can search for the contract you would like to trade and click on the row to select the market.
Fill out order form
After selecting your derivatives contract, your Trade tab layout, including the order form, will update with the selected contract market data.
Here you’ll see buy and sell buttons, a dropdown menu allowing you to change the order type, three input boxes, and a quantity slider. Before we input values into these boxes, knowing how an order type works is necessary.
A market order is meant for immediate execution, as it will match with opposing limit orders that are already available on our order books. Market orders will always incur a slightly higher fee known as a taker fee (the second percent beside your 30 day volume). With market orders you can only input the volume you would like to buy or sell and not the price.
Limit orders will execute at the price you’ve set or better, once the market reaches your limit price. They can be subject to maker or taker fees depending on when it executes. If a matching order already exists and it’s executed immediately, then taker fees will be charged.
On both the market and limit order form you are able to isolate your order / position margin, this allows you to choose the max leverage and hence the funds you will risk on the position. You can learn more about isolated margin and the default cross margin here.
Submit order
Once you’ve decided on if you’re looking for a market or limit order and whether you want to isolate your position, you can enter / select the values in the fields needed to submit the order. It is worth skimming over the details entered once more since there is no order confirmation screen.
Once you are sure everything looks good, you just need to press the large buy/sell button at the bottom of the form and your order will be submitted.
A small notification will pop up on the bottom right hand side of the tab to indicate whether the order was placed successfully or not.
Wait for order execution
If a market order is selected, the trade will happen instantly and your position will be opened. You can view successfully executed (closed) market orders on the Trades tab.
Limit orders may not be filled right away but you can view their status in the Open orders tab. In the below example, the BTC Perp price would have to reach $22,350 for the limit buy order to be executed.
If your order has not yet been executed you are able to cancel the order by selecting the 'x' button on the right hand side, or else edit the order by clicking the pencil button next to it.
Select the Derivatives contract
First you will need to know what contract you would like to trade, for example buying a BTC perpetual contract or ETH perpetual contract. After you know which contract/s you’ll be trading, you can select them from the Markets page on the main app menu
Once on the Markets page you will be able to select the ‘Derivatives’ tab to view all derivative contracts.
If you want to search for a particular derivatives contract you are able to click on the search bar and type in the contract you would like to trade, using the derivatives tab filter, to filter your results to show futures contracts only.
Once you have found your derivatives contract if you select it, you will open the Market detail page for that specific contract
Fill out order form
After opening the Market detail page for your derivatives contract, you will be able to see all market data for that contract as well as buy and sell buttons at the bottom of your screen to open the order form.
Clicking on either the buy or sell button you will open the order form which you are able to expand. You will see a buy/sell switch, dropdown menu to change order type, three input boxes, a quantity slider as well as an ‘isolate position’ toggle. Before we input values into these boxes knowing how an order type works is necessary
A market order is meant for immediate execution, as it will match with opposing limit orders that are already available on our order books. Market orders will always incur a slightly higher fee known as a taker fee (the second percent beside your 30 day volume). With market orders you can only input the volume you would like to buy or sell and not the price.
Limit orders will execute at the price you’ve set or better, once the market reaches your limit price. They can be subject to maker or taker fees depending on when it executes. If a matching order already exists and it’s executed immediately, then taker fees will be charged.
On both the market and limit order form you are able to isolate your order / position margin, this allows you to choose the max leverage and hence the funds you will risk on the position. You can learn more about isolated margin and the default cross margin here.
Submit order
Once you've decided on if you're looking for a market or limit order and whether you want to isolate your position, you can enter / select the values in the fields needed to submit the order. If you have order confirmations switched on then you will then be taken through our order confirmation flow where you are able to review the details you have entered and swipe to confirm and submit your order. Once submitted you will see a review screen showing if your order was successfully placed or not.
If you have order confirmations switched off then you will see a small notification at the top of your screen indicating whether the order was placed successfully or not.
Wait for order execution
If a market order is selected, the trade will happen instantly and your position will be opened. You can view successfully executed (closed) market orders on the Trading Page under the Orders tab in the recently closed orders section.
Limit orders may not be filled right away but you can view their status in the Open orders tab on the Trading page. If your order has not yet been executed you are able to cancel the order by either clicking on the order and then clicking ‘Cancel’ in the order details or by doing a click and hold action on the order to open the long press menu and then clicking on ‘Cancel Order’.
Investment services in relation to derivatives are provided by Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited (ex I.F. Greenfields Wealth Ltd) ("PEDSL-CY"). PEDSL-CY is authorised and approved by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) for the provision of investment services. See Risk Disclosures here.
PEDSL-CY is authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission with licence number 342/17. PEDSL-CY is registered in Cyprus with registered number HE 356603 and registered office at Athalassas, 62, Mezzanine, Strovolos 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus