A resting instruction that turns into a market or limit order once price trades through a level you set, to cap a loss.
Last verified 13 September 2026 · written by the DexLadder team
What it means
A resting instruction that turns into a market or limit order once price trades through a level you set, to cap a loss.
Why it matters when you trade
A stop is a decision made while you are calm, executed while you are not. That is its entire value. Two failure modes dominate: placing it where it is convenient rather than where your idea is wrong, and using a stop-market in an illiquid pair, where the trigger and the fill can be far apart. A stop does not guarantee your exit price — in a gap or a cascade it guarantees only that you exited.
Worked example
You buy at 100 with a stop at 94. Risk per unit is 6, so a 2% account risk on a $10,000 account gives a position of $10,000 × 0.02 / 0.06 = 3.33 units, not "as much as I can afford".
See it on live markets
DexLadder runs stop-loss against live market and pool data, with simulated capital, so you can watch it act on an order instead of reading about it — no account, no wallet, nothing installed.