Futures Bot
Haasbot's Futures Bot is a new bot type that is introduced in Haasbot 2.3. Futures bots are bots that function just like Trade Bots but in that they function with higher leverage on the supported futures platforms. Currently, Haasbotsupports futures trading on the following exchanges:
OKCoin.com - 10x and 20x leverage for Bitcoin 10x for Litecoin.
BitVC - 5x, 10x, and 20x leverage for Bitcoin.
Bitmex - up to 50x leverage for Bitcoin and many other pairs.
Futures Bots are different from Trade Bots in that there are 3 positions, which are No Position, Short, and Long. No position is generally the position you will want to start your Futures Bot in, as you probably don't have a position, but if you do, you can set the bot to the corresponding position that you currently have. Short means that you anticipate that the commodity you are trading (Bitcoin or Litecoin) will go down in value and thus you take a Short Position, while Long means that you anticipate that the commodity you are trading will go up in value and thus you will take a Long Position. Using Haasbot on the Futures markets allows you to increase your gains/losses as leverage is generally offered up to 20x. Because of this, this is only recommended to users who understand what they are doing as the risk is significantly higher than trading 3x leverage on Bitfinex or just trading the spot markets.
Overview
Because of the way futures markets work, users who are new to the futures markets will need to understand a few new concepts and how Haasbot handles these concepts. As we have already covered the possible positions that a user will have, it is important to know how Haasbot handles the change in positions. For example, say that your futures bot is short and the Indicator you are running is now about to signal a "Buy" signal. What will happen is that (unless you have Insurance to protect this) Haasbot will close your short position and immediately open a long position when that Buy signal is produced. The same will occur if you are long and your Indicator signals a sell signal, as the bot will close your long and open a short on the sell signal. You can change how this function in Trade Settings --> Advanced, so that the bot will only go Long or Short and to close those positions on the opposite trade signal.
It is also important to note that the trade amount you select within the futures bot will be Contracts. On OKCoin.com, 1 contract is $100 worth of Bitcoin, $10 worth of Litecoin. On BitVC, 1 contract is worth 100 cny of Bitcoin. While the underlying asset in the futures market is either Bitcoin or Litecoin, you will need to calculate how many contracts you want to trade, as this is how trading is done on the futures market.
Setting up a Futures Bot
The first thing you need to do is go to "Trading Platforms" to enter in the API Keys for the exchange you want to trade Cryptocurrency Futures. You will need to click on the "Leverage Trading" tab and enter in the API keys of the exchanges you want to trade on.
The next thing you want to do when setting up your first futures bot is to go to the Dashboard and then click on "New Futures Bot."
From here you will be prompted to give the Futures Bot a name, choose the exchange you want that particular bot to trade on, choose the particular market (Weekly, Biweekly, Quarterly), and then choose the leverage you want to use. Once you have decided on this, you can click save and a new futures bot will be created. We still need to set up a few more things, so lets move on to that.
From here, we need to open up the Futures Bot by clicking on the "eye" icon.
Once we have done that we need to click on "Trade Settings" and we will be prompted to add in some additional settings. First, lets do the basics, which include the leverage you want to use, your position (if you don't have a open position, use No Position), Long/Short prices (if you want to use your last trades for Insurances, but I would recommend leaving them zeroed out), and you will want to keep "Fixed Amount," as its important that you set up the exact amount of contracts you want to trade. Next you will enter in the amount of contracts you want to trade and you can use the "Green Cont" number to help to see how many contracts you can open up with the leverage you have selected.
Now that we have entered in the basic trade settings, we can now go to the "Advanced Settings." You only need to do this if you want to do something custom like "Only go Long or Short" and to "Close the position on the opposite trade signal." By default, Haasbot will go Long and close a short position on Buy Signals, close a Long and open a Short on Sell trade signals. If you want to do something different, you need to change this in the Advanced Settings. You can also change the order type (Limit or Market Orders) in the Advanced Settings section.
Now that we have decided on everything in the Trade Settings tab, we can Save then and choose one or more Indicators. For this, I chose RSI at 4 minutes and a length of 20 for some quick scalping. Go ahead and set up whatever you want and click save.
Pro Tip - You can monitor any exchange that you have enabled the API Drivers and execute trades on Futures markets. You do not have to have your Indicators trade based off of the futures markets. For instance, you can monitor OKCoin.cn to execute trades on the Quarterly market on OKCoin.com.
Now that we have decided on our Indicators we can click "Update" and go back to the main futures bot page. From there we can click on the "play" button which will enable the futures bot and it will trade on the next trade signal from your Indicator or Indicators.
From here, we can go back to the Dashboard and the futures bot will update as it executes trades.
This is what an active futures bot looks like, although no trades have been executed yet.
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