Glossary
Short, plain explanations of the trading and tandem terms you meet in the app, from A to Z.
A
Agent key (trading key): A separate key tandem makes for your account, which your wallet approves. It can place and cancel orders for 90 days, but it can never withdraw or move your money. See Live trading.
Authenticator app: An app on your phone that shows a new six-digit code every few seconds. Tandem asks for it at sign-in and before live trading. See Security.
B
Backup code: A one-time code you save when you set up your authenticator app. It lets you sign in once if you lose your phone.
Builder fee: A fee a trading app adds to an order on Hyperliquid, approved by your wallet. Tandem's builder fee is 0.01% of each live order, on HIP-3 markets too. See Fees.
C
Copy trading: Your account follows another trader's trades automatically, scaled to your money and within your own limits.
Countertrade: A copy that takes the opposite side of every trade a trader makes. If the trader wins, you lose. The trader's stop loss closes it at a gain, and their take profit at a loss. See Countertrade.
D
Deployer: The company that runs a HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid. It sets the market's price feed, leverage and fees, and can halt the market.
F
Fill: An order, or part of one, that has been traded. A large order can fill in several parts.
Floor: The amount your copy money must not fall below. When it is reached, copying stops (Stop everything after a drop of).
Funding rate: A small payment between long and short traders of a perpetual, made at regular times while a position is open. Depending on the market, your position pays or receives it.
H
HIP-3 market: A market for a stock, an index, a commodity or a currency that a deployer runs on Hyperliquid, shown with its dex, such as
GOLD on xyz (xyz:GOLD). Live copies add on them as on any coin, inside each market's hours. See Stock and commodity markets.
K
Kill switch: A control that cancels all your open live orders at once and blocks new ones until you turn trading back on. It can also close all your positions.
L
Leverage: Holding a position larger than your money. At 5×, $100 of margin holds a $500 position, and gains and losses grow five times too.
Limit order: An order to buy or sell at a set price or better. It may wait on the order book until the price is reached.
Liquidation: When losses use up a position's margin, Hyperliquid closes the position for you. You lose that margin.
Liquidation price: The price at which a position would be liquidated. The order form shows it before you place an order.
Live: Trading with real money on your own Hyperliquid account. A Live marker shows while live trading is on.
Live copy: A copy that trades your live Hyperliquid account with real money. Copying live is off until you turn it on.
Long: A position that gains when the price goes up.
M
Maker and taker: A maker order rests on the order book and is filled later; a taker order fills at once. Hyperliquid charges takers more.
Margin: The money set aside to hold a position. On Hyperliquid, margin for perpetuals comes from your perps balance, or from your spot USDC on a unified account.
Market order: An order that fills at once at the best prices available now.
P
Perpetual (perp): A futures contract with no end date. You trade the price of a coin without owning the coin, often with leverage.
Perps balance: The part of your Hyperliquid account used as margin for perpetuals in the standard mode. Deposits land here.
PnL (P&L): Profit and loss. Closed P&L is what finished trades made; open (unrealised) P&L is what open positions would make if closed now.
Position: What you hold in a market right now: long or short, its size and its entry price.
Practice: Trading or copying with pretend money. Nothing real is spent or earned.
Practice copy: A copy that runs on practice money, so you can see how a trader and your plan would do before risking real money.
R
Reduce only: An order that can only make a position smaller, never larger or the other way round.
Revoke: Ending live trading. It destroys tandem's trading key for your account at once.
S
Short: A position that gains when the price goes down.
Slippage: The difference between the price you expected and the price you got, common in fast markets or with large orders.
Spot balance: The part of your Hyperliquid account that holds tokens and USDC for the spot market. In the standard mode, move USDC to perps to use it as margin; on a unified account, your spot USDC is your margin. See Funding your account.
Stop loss (SL): An order that closes a position when the price moves against you to a set level, to limit the loss.
T
Take profit (TP): An order that closes a position when the price reaches a set level in your favour.
U
Unified account: A Hyperliquid account mode in which one USDC balance, on spot, backs every market, HIP-3 markets included. Tandem counts its money as its spot USDC, and copies on HIP-3 markets need it. See Funding your account.
USDC: A digital dollar. Hyperliquid accounts hold and settle in USDC.
W
Wallet: An app or browser extension that holds your crypto and signs approvals. Only your wallet can move your money.
WalletConnect: A way to connect a phone wallet to tandem by scanning a QR code.