Liquidation map on the chart, Stop piles and SL past pile
Where the crowd's stops and liquidations are piled up above and below the price, how the LIQ layer shows them on every chart, how the Stop piles column reads on every open trade, and how SL past pile moves your stop just beyond the biggest pile on the losing side.
What it is
Leveraged traders leave stop-losses and liquidation prices at similar levels. Where many of them sit together the market often runs to that level first, clears the stops, and only then makes its real move. A stop placed just before such a pile is at risk of being taken out with the crowd.
PatternXRadar estimates these piles for every coin from open interest and price, much like CoinGlass's liquidation heatmap, and rebuilds the estimate every 5 minutes:
- above the price: where shorts would be liquidated or stopped;
- below the price: where longs would be liquidated or stopped.
Each pile's size is shown as a share of the coin's open interest.
Where to find it
- LIQ layer on every coin's chart (on by default; the LIQ button in the chart toolbar turns it off and on).
- Stop piles column in Trading → account → Open trades, on every open trade (demo, paper and live).
- The liquidation map inside the Re-analyse and SL past pile dialogs of an open trade.
- The stop past the liquidation pile option on the Pair Model algorithm card, which uses the same map before every entry; see Pair Model account options.
Reading the LIQ layer on the chart
The chart of each of the 50 model coins shows the map right on the price:
| On the chart | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Violet line and band above the price, tag Shorts liq ~$… | The biggest pile above: where shorts get liquidated. Their forced buying can push the price up through it. |
| Orange line and band below the price, tag Longs liq ~$… | The biggest pile below: where longs get liquidated. Their forced selling can push the price down through it. |
| ◆ bigger and a thicker, solid line | The bigger of the two piles. The smaller one is dashed. |
| Bars on the right edge | The whole map around the price: one bar per small price band, a longer bar means more gets liquidated there. |
The Liquidation piles card above the chart gives both piles in words: price, distance from the current price, the estimated $ amount, which pile is bigger and by how many times, and how old the map is. If the card says the map is more than 20 minutes old, the last rebuild did not finish; the next one runs within 5 minutes.
The $ amounts are estimates from open interest, not exchange data. In the 12-month test, with both piles equally far away, price reached the bigger one first only about 4 to 5 times in 100 more often than chance: a small lean, not a signal on its own. The map covers about three times the coin's typical hourly move in each direction; piles further away are not shown.
Reading the Stop piles column
Each open trade shows two lines:
| Line | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✕ price · % · size (red) | The biggest pile against the trade - below the price for a long, above it for a short - with its distance from the price and its size (% of open interest). This is where the market may run first to clear stops. |
| ✓ price · % · size (green) | The biggest pile in the trade's favour. |
The bigger of the two is shown in bold. In the 12-month backtest, when two piles were equally far away, price reached the bigger one first only slightly more often than not - a tilt, not a certainty. Treat the column as information.
Reading the liquidation map
The map lists price levels around the current price with a bar per level: red bars above (shorts' piles), green bars below (longs' piles). Your entry, SL and TP are marked on their rows, and now marks the current price. The line above the bars names the biggest pile above and below, with distance and size. The time under the map tells you which 5-minute rebuild you are looking at.
SL past pile: move your stop beyond the pile
- In Open trades, click SL past pile on the trade.
- The dialog reads the coin's live map and shows a preview: - stop now - the current stop and what the trade makes or loses there (before fees); - pile (losing side) - the biggest pile against the trade, its distance and size; - new stop - where the stop would go, just past that pile, and what the trade would lose there; - liquidation - the liquidation price and how many times further away than the new stop it is.
- The verdict at the top says whether a move is useful. If the stop is already past the pile, or there is no pile close enough, there is nothing to apply.
- Click Apply to move the stop, Refresh to read the map again, or Cancel.
On a live account the stop order on the exchange is replaced as well.
Limits and caveats
- A wider stop is a bigger loss if it is hit. SL past pile does not change the leverage, so moving the stop further away increases what the trade loses at the stop. The new stop is always kept well inside the liquidation price.
- The map is an estimate. Exchanges do not publish where individual stops sit; the piles are modelled from open interest and price moves and can be wrong, especially right after a big move.
- In the 12-month backtest, stops placed past the losing-side pile were hit somewhat less often and the overall result was about the same or a little better. That is a hypothetical backtest, not a promise; see the risk disclosure.
- The automatic version (stop past the liquidation pile on the algorithm card) also re-sizes the leverage so the liquidation price stays well beyond the wider stop. The manual button does not touch leverage.