FORECANDLE RESEARCH
Long-form notes on derivatives positioning, news flow and risk — written for traders who would rather have a process they can review than a feed that shouts. No calls, no hype, and every claim written so it could be checked.
20 GUIDES · 6 TOPICS
If you read nothing else, read these. Each one is referenced repeatedly by the posts below.
A signal record is only informative if it could have come out badly. That requires timestamped calls published before the outcome, explicit entry, target and invalidation levels, a fixed scoring rule, every call included rather than a selection, and the sample size printed next to every percentage.
Funding is a periodic payment between perpetual longs and shorts that keeps the contract price near spot. A positive rate means longs pay shorts, which says leverage is skewed long — not that price must fall. Read it against the price path, the change in open interest and the payment interval before drawing any conclusion.
Position size is derived, not chosen. Fix the cash amount you are prepared to lose if the invalidation is reached, measure the percentage distance from entry to that level, and divide: risk budget divided by stop distance gives the notional exposure. Leverage changes the capital committed, not the underlying price risk.
Funding, open interest, basis and forced liquidation — the plumbing that decides how far a move travels once it starts.
The mechanics behind a forced-selling spiral: maintenance margin, the liquidation engine, thinning books and the feedback loop — plus what separates a cascade from real repricing.
READ GUIDEPrediction-market prices are probabilities with costs attached. How to convert them, why the resolution criteria matter more than the number, and where the odds lead or lag price.
READ GUIDECrypto trades like a long-duration risk asset most of the time. The transmission channel through real rates, why rolling correlation swings between 0.7 and 0, and what breaks the link.
READ GUIDEPositive funding does not mean short. How to read perpetual funding against price and open interest, plus the arithmetic that turns 0.01% per 8h into annual carry.
READ GUIDEOpen interest measures leverage in the system, not sentiment. The four price-and-OI combinations, how it differs from volume, and where the data cadence misleads.
READ GUIDELiquidation maps are models, not exchange ledgers. What they estimate, the assumptions inside them, and how to turn a cluster into a conditional plan instead of a target.
READ GUIDELeverage, funding, basis and liquidation risk make a perpetual a different instrument, not a leveraged version of spot. What changes about cost, holding period and price discovery.
READ GUIDESource, novelty, transmission channel — and how to measure what a headline did rather than assert it.
What a 0-10 news impact score measures, the rubric behind it, why novelty beats severity, and the specific ways an automated score is wrong.
READ GUIDEEvent-study mechanics for traders: choosing horizons, defining a base close, handling events you cannot measure, and why a result without a baseline says nothing.
READ GUIDEHow to separate a headline that changes market structure from one that only creates noise: source, delta from expectations, transmission channel and confirmation.
READ GUIDEThe releases that reprice the policy path, the order in which markets react, and why the first move is so often retraced.
The minute-by-minute mechanics of a US inflation release: what is priced beforehand, why core beats headline, the transmission order through rates and FX, and the common reversal.
READ GUIDEWhy FOMC days often produce two opposite moves, what the dot plot changes, and how to read a decision that was fully priced beforehand.
READ GUIDEA pre-event process for inflation, labour and central-bank releases: what to write down beforehand, how to read a surprise through the current regime, and when to stand aside.
READ GUIDEPosition sizing from invalidation, the real length of a normal losing streak, and how large a sample has to be before it means anything.
Five losses in a row is unremarkable at almost any hit rate. The binomial maths behind streaks, why drawdown recovery is asymmetric, and how big a sample has to be before it means anything.
READ GUIDEHow to convert an entry and an invalidation point into consistent trade risk, with worked arithmetic for spot and leveraged positions and a rule for correlated exposure.
READ GUIDEInvalidation levels, journals, and the questions that separate a scoreable record from marketing.
Most published signal records cannot be proved wrong. The seven questions that separate a scoreable record from marketing, and what an honest denominator looks like.
READ GUIDEAn invalidation level turns an opinion into a risk-defined decision. How to derive one from the thesis, keep it outside normal noise, and make the review honest afterwards.
READ GUIDEA field-by-field template for recording context, execution and outcome, plus the tagging discipline that lets you query the record instead of remembering it.
READ GUIDEFinding the zones where behaviour actually changed, and telling a liquidity grab apart from acceptance.
Why breaks fail so often, the four confirmations that separate acceptance from a liquidity grab, and how to plan for both outcomes instead of predicting one.
READ GUIDEHow to find the areas where behaviour actually changed, tell reaction apart from acceptance, and keep a chart that answers a question instead of collecting lines.
READ GUIDEScored news, derivatives positioning, estimated liquidation structure and event odds — read live rather than reconstructed after the fact.
AI ANALYSIS · NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE