Leverage does not change the strategy — it changes the stop loss

The most common mistake with perpetuals is raising leverage and leaving the exit rules alone. Leverage multiplies the position, not the distance price travels — so the stop loss has to move.

1. The rule

# SELL — scale the stop to how much the instrument actually moves if Volatility(900) > 1.5: if ProfitPct >= 3.0 or ProfitPct <= -2.0 or HoldTime >= 2400: Sell() elif ProfitPct >= 1.5 or ProfitPct <= -1.0 or HoldTime >= 1800: Sell()

2. What leverage does and does not multiply

That table is the whole argument. A fixed 1% stop means something different on a calm instrument than on a violent one: on the calm one it is a considered exit, on the violent one it is noise closing your position. Leverage does not change which of those it is — it only changes how much the mistake costs. Reading the recent coefficient of variation and widening target and stop together keeps the shape of the trade constant while the market changes underneath it. Note that the wider branch also has a longer time cap; a wider stop needs more time to be worth taking.

3. The number that actually depends on leverage

Your position size, and nothing in the exit block. A 2.0% stop at 10x is 20% of the margin committed to that trade. The exit rule did not change; what changed is what you can afford to have open at once. That is the calculation worth doing before you raise leverage, and it belongs in position sizing rather than in the strategy.

4. What the round trip asks of it

Drawn above is the high-volatility branch. The 3.0% target against a 2.0% stop needs 40% on paper and 42% at a measured perpetual round trip of about 0.10% (the real cost of crypto trading). Two points, and it is worth noticing that leverage does not appear anywhere in that calculation either. Break-even win rate is a property of the target-to-stop ratio and the cost, both of which are unlevered. Leverage changes your variance, not your edge — which is the least intuitive and most expensive thing about it.

5. What to change first

The volatility threshold, measured rather than guessed. Record Volatility(900) at every entry across a few weeks and look at the distribution: if 95% of your entries fall on one side of 1.5, the branch you wrote is not doing anything. Then size the position against the wider stop rather than the narrower one, so a regime change does not quietly double your risk per trade.