Crypto Tools·Long/Short Ratio

Long/Short Ratio

Where the traders are, and where the money is

Reading positioning for 24 futures markets…
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Three ratios, three different questions

Binance publishes long/short positioning in more than one form, and they answer different questions. The global account ratio counts traders: what share of accounts holds a long. The top-trader position ratio weights by size: what share of the money in large accounts is long. Most trackers pick one of these and label it "the long/short ratio", which quietly discards the more interesting part.

The interesting part is when they disagree. A market where most accounts are long while the large positions lean short is telling you that the crowd and the capital are on opposite sides — a very different picture from one where both agree. This page shows both, plus the gap between them, plus open interest so you can see whether a lopsided reading sits on a deep market or a thin one.

What it deliberately does not do is turn any of this into a signal. The popular version — fade the crowd when positioning gets extreme — is testable in principle, but Binance only exposes thirty days of this history, which is a single market mood. A backtest over it would return a number that looks like evidence and is not, so no backtest is shown.

⚠️ Not investment advice. Positioning describes where participants currently stand and carries no forecast. The figures cover Binance futures only, not the wider market. All decisions and risks are your own.

Frequently asked questions

Q. What is the long/short ratio?

It describes how Binance futures participants are positioned. The account ratio is the share of trading accounts holding a long; the top-trader position ratio is the share of money in large accounts that is long. They answer different questions and this page shows both.

Q. Why do the account and position ratios differ?

Because one counts people and the other counts money. When many small accounts are long while a few large positions are short, the account ratio leans long and the position ratio leans short. That disagreement is usually more informative than either number alone.

Q. Does a crowded ratio mean the price will move the other way?

That is the popular claim and this page does not endorse it. Binance exposes only thirty days of positioning history, which sits inside a single market mood, so any backtest over it would produce a number with no evidential weight. Rather than showing a misleading result, no backtest is shown.

Q. Why does open interest matter here?

Because a lopsided ratio on a thin market means far less than the same ratio on a deep one. Open interest is the notional value of all open positions, so it tells you how much capital the reading actually represents.

Q. What do "crowded" and "tilted" mean?

They are labels applied at twenty and ten percentage points away from an even split. Those cutoffs are conventions chosen for readability, not thresholds discovered in data, and a reading just either side of one is not meaningfully different.

Q. Does this cover the whole market?

No, only Binance USD-M futures. Other venues have their own participants and their own positioning, and spot holdings are not represented at all. It is a large slice of derivatives activity rather than a complete picture.