Mechanics and risk RISK Updated 2026-10-20 By Ivo Renner

Liquidated on a stock perpetual? Rebuilding what happened from your order history

Four records answer almost every question about a forced close: the closing order in Order History, the Close Time in Position History, one minute of the mark-price chart, and the lines in Transaction History around that minute. Read in that order, they tell you who closed the position, which price crossed which line, and where each USDT of the margin went. A stock perpetual adds one extra step that a crypto perp does not need: converting the timestamp to New York time, because the price your position was measured against depends on whether the US market was open, shut for the night, or shut for the weekend. Every page and label below comes from Binance’s help pages and contract data as read on 20 October 2026.

Export the records before you start reading them

Do this before anything else. In the futures trading screen, Binance’s order-history FAQ sends you to [Orders] → [USDⓈ-M Futures Order] in the top-right corner, then [Order History]. The export icon sits at the top right of that page. The pop-up offers preset periods and a [Beyond 3 months - Custom] option for a full report; pick a window that covers the day you opened the position, not just the day it closed.

Then take two screenshots of your own screen: the [Position History] entry for the closed position (it sits under the trading interface in USDⓈ-M Futures), and the futures part of your transaction history filtered to the same day. Those three files are all you need for the rest of this page, and they are what support will ask for if it comes to that.

Find the closing order: liquidation, ADL or your own stop

Open the closed position in Position History first. Binance lists the fields as Symbol, Margin Mode, Side, Open Time, Close Time, Entry Price, Average Closing Price, Closing PnL, Max Open Interest and Closed Volume. Two of them matter straight away. If Close Time shows --, the position was only partly closed, and you are reviewing a partial liquidation. And the Average Closing Price leaves fees out, so it will not reconcile to your balance on its own.

Now go to Order History and find the order whose time matches Close Time. It will be one of three kinds, and each sends you down a different path.

• An order you did not place, closing a losing position. The liquidation engine did it. Binance’s liquidation FAQ says the system first sends one large immediate-or-cancel order into the market and stops if what remains covers the maintenance requirement, so you may see a single fill or a partial one. Its separate Liquidation History tab shows the price at which the liquidation actually happened.
• A closing order on a position that was in profit. That points to auto-deleveraging. Binance’s ADL FAQ says the profitable position is closed at the bankruptcy price of the trader being liquidated on the other side, that no trading fee is charged, and that a notice with the amount and price is sent at once. Look for that notice before anything else; nothing below about liquidation prices applies to you.
• A stop or take-profit you set earlier. Then nobody forced anything. The question becomes why your stop filled where it did, which is a matter of trigger settings and order-book depth rather than margin.

Convert the close time to New York time

Your history shows times in the zone your account displays. Convert Close Time to US Eastern time, then place it in the week. Binance’s TradFi FAQ runs a different index method in each session, and it caps the gap between the mark price and the index at a different width depending on the session. The table puts both next to what each means for your review. Our session clock does the conversion if you would rather not count hours.

The weekend row needs the most care. Since 16 May 2026 the equity contracts have used Orderbook EWMA mode while the market is shut: the index is a smoothed mid price from the perpetual’s own order book, and the mark can sit up to 3% away from it. A Saturday liquidation on a stock perp therefore says nothing about the stock. It says the people trading that contract on Saturday pushed the price through your line. The guide to trading outside US hours walks through the full week.

The last row matters on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings. When the index leaves order-book mode, the FAQ describes a weighted blend from the old value to the new one, finished within a minute. If your close time sits inside that minute, the cause was the distance between the weekend price and the first real quote, delivered almost at once.

Put the mark-price chart next to your liquidation price

Liquidation is triggered when the mark price reaches the position’s liquidation price. The ordinary chart shows the last traded price, so it can look as though the market never came near your line. Switch it. On the website, click [Last Price] on the trading chart to toggle to the mark price. In the app, Binance’s FAQ says to use the [Classic] trade mode, tap the chart icon, then tap [Last Price] to switch.

Set one-minute candles and go to the minute of Close Time. You will see one of three pictures.

The mark crossed your line while the last price did not

The mark is built from the index and other inputs rather than from the last trade, so a quiet last-price chart and a falling mark can coexist. The liquidation followed the rules; the chart you were watching was the wrong one.

The mark jumped past your line in one step

Binance’s own example is a short with a calculated liquidation price of 17,006 USDT and a mark that leaps from 17,000 to 17,100 within a second. The position is liquidated at a mark of 17,100, and that figure, rather than 17,006, appears in the Liquidation History tab. If your recorded liquidation price is worse than the one your screen showed, look for this jump before assuming an error.

The mark never reached the liquidation price you remember

Then the liquidation price moved after you last looked. Three things move it without any order of yours: losses on other positions in cross margin, funding payments taken from the margin, and a transfer out of the futures wallet. The next section shows where each of those leaves a trace.

Follow the margin through Transaction History

Filter the futures transaction history to the day and read every line between opening and Close Time. Four types carry the story.

1. Funding fee. Each settlement, paid or received. On an equity contract settling every eight or four hours, a week of paying funding at high leverage can lift a liquidation price noticeably. Our funding cost calculator totals it if you copy in the rates and settlement count from your history.
2. Commission. The trading fee on the opening and any partial closes.
3. Realized PnL. The loss locked in by the liquidation fills.
4. Liquidation Clearance. Binance’s FAQ says the clearance fee is marked with exactly this label, calculated from the contract’s clearance fee rate and the position’s notional value, and not charged when the position ends up bankrupt.

On 20 October 2026, Binance’s public contract data listed a liquidation clearance fee rate of 1.5% for every one of the 221 TradFi contracts then trading. BTCUSDT showed 1.25%. Set that 1.5% beside the maintenance rate in the first leverage bracket, which the same day’s bracket data gave as 1% on SPYUSDT, NVDAUSDT and MSTRUSDT and 2% on AAPLUSDT, TSLAUSDT and QQQUSDT.

That comparison explains a result that can look like a mistake. Binance’s FAQ warns that when the effective maintenance margin is below the clearance fee rate, small positions may be bankrupt the moment they enter liquidation, whatever the final fill. A hypothetical example: a long with 4,000 USDT of notional at 10× in isolated margin puts up 400 USDT. With a 1% maintenance rate, liquidation starts after a fall of roughly 9% (before fees and funding), with about 36 USDT of margin left. A 1.5% clearance fee on the remaining 3,640 USDT or so of notional comes to roughly 55 USDT, more than remains. Expect the whole 400 to be gone. Going by the FAQ’s wording, there may also be no Liquidation Clearance line at all, because the fee is not taken from a bankrupt position and the insurance fund covers the shortfall instead.

On a 2% contract the same position reaches liquidation sooner, after about an 8% fall, but with roughly 73 USDT still assigned, so the fee fits inside it, and a clearance line plus a small return of margin is the likely outcome if the fills were close to the trigger. Run your own entry, leverage and maintenance rate through the liquidation price calculator to see what the number should have been on the day you opened.

If you were in cross margin, look at the other positions

In cross margin the whole futures balance backs every position, and Binance’s FAQ says a liquidation cancels all your open orders. In isolated margin it cancels your open orders in that symbol only. So a cross-margin liquidation of a stock perp may have started somewhere else. A crypto position falling on Saturday can drag a stock perp under while the stock is shut and its index is flat.

Check the Realized PnL and Funding fee lines for every symbol in the hours before Close Time, not just the one that was closed. If losses elsewhere account for the drop in margin, the stock perp was the victim, not the cause. The margin modes guide covers how to keep that from happening again.

Why you may not have had a warning

Binance says it uses reasonable endeavours, with no obligation, to send margin-call and liquidation-call notices by email and in-app message, and does not guarantee timely delivery. When the margin call and the liquidation call would land too close together, the system cancels the margin call and sends only the liquidation notice. A weekend book that moves fast, or a reopen blend that finishes inside a minute, is exactly when the two collapse into one. A missing warning, on its own, is consistent with the published rules.

What your own records cannot tell you

Some questions have no answer from your side of the screen, and it is better to know which before writing to anyone.

• How deep the book was at that second. Your fills show the prices you got, not what else was resting at each level.
• Whether the insurance fund took over part of the position. The FAQ says that in volatile conditions the fund can take over a liquidated position directly at the bankruptcy price, which may be worse for you than the liquidation price. Your history shows the result, not who sat on the other side.
• Why the weekend book traded where it did. Other traders set that price; nothing in your account explains their reasons.

Support can help where your own records contradict the published rules. Two examples: the mark-price chart never reached the recorded liquidation price and nothing in Transaction History moved it, or the ledger above fails to close by more than rounding. Send the symbol, side, margin mode, Close Time in UTC, the order ID of the closing order, your export, and the mark-price screenshot for that minute. A general complaint that the price was unfair, with no figure that breaks a rule, has nothing for anyone to check.