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Leverage amplifies both sides of a trade. It’s what turns a 1% move into a real swing on your simulated balance — and what turns a bad entry into a liquidation. This page covers how leverage, margin, and liquidation work on Speculate’s competition engine.
Competition trading runs on Speculate’s own simulated engine using real market prices — it is not routed to a live exchange. Leverage, margin, and liquidation mechanics mirror a real perpetuals venue so the skill is real, even though the balance is not. Real USDC only ever moves through entry fees and prize payouts. See Payouts for how simulated performance converts into real winnings.

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Leverage

Leverage is adjustable per position, from 1x up to the competition’s maximum. Competitions run leverage caps as high as 100x, set individually per competition.
  • Lower leverage — more room before liquidation, smaller notional exposure per dollar of margin.
  • Higher leverage — bigger notional exposure per dollar of margin, but a smaller adverse move liquidates the position.
Higher leverage means a smaller price move can wipe out your margin. A 10x position is liquidated by roughly a 10x smaller move than a 1x position. Leverage is a risk multiplier in both directions.
Check the competition’s rules for its specific maximum before you size a position — see Order types for how leverage interacts with order execution.

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Margin mode

Competitions use cross margin. Your entire simulated balance backs every open position, rather than each position holding its own isolated slice of margin.
Under cross margin, gains and losses across all your open positions share the same collateral pool. A losing position can draw down margin that a winning position would otherwise keep safe — and vice versa.

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Liquidation

A position is liquidated when your equity falls below the maintenance margin requirement for that position’s size. Maintenance margin isn’t a flat percentage — it scales with position size through a tiered schedule: bigger positions require a larger maintenance margin and cap out at lower maximum leverage.
1

Open a position

You post margin and select leverage up to the competition’s cap.
2

Price moves against you

Unrealized losses reduce your equity on that position.
3

Equity crosses the maintenance threshold

Once equity falls below the maintenance margin requirement for your position’s tier, liquidation is triggered.
4

Position is closed

The position is liquidated, capping further loss on that position within your simulated balance.

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Maintenance margin tiers

Maintenance margin requirements rise in steps as position size (notional) grows. Larger positions demand more maintenance margin and unlock less maximum leverage.
Position size (notional)Maintenance margin rateMax leverage
Up to ~$300,000~0.4%Up to 125x (engine max)
Mid-size tiersProgressively higherProgressively lower
Largest tierHighest1x
These are the underlying engine tiers. The actual leverage cap you can select is set by each competition, up to 100x — a competition’s max leverage will never exceed its own configured cap, even if the engine tier would technically allow more.
Smaller positions get the cheapest maintenance margin and the most leverage headroom. If you want to run high leverage, keep position size well inside the lowest tier.

Payouts & ROI ranking

See how simulated performance is ranked and converted into real prize payouts.

Order types

Review how market, limit, and other order types interact with leverage and margin.