Articles on: Trading Essentials

Smart Orders: Take Profit and Exit Ladder

A Take Profit / Exit Ladder is used to add one or more Exit Targets to a new Entry order, to create all-in-one or Smart Order (Buy then Sell or Sell then Buy).

Overview

There are two types of Take Profit/Exit Ladders:

Scales is used for 2 to 10 exits as a ladder. You choose the high and the low exit price, the number of orders (steps), a Price Scale and a Size Scale (details below). Using these, Altrady will calculate the price and value of each of the intermediate steps for the Ladder.
Targets can be used for 1 to 10 exit targets, with the trader choosing the price (or percentage profit) and amount for each one.

The Take Profit / Exit Ladder can be combined with any Entry type: Standard, Stop Order, Trailing Stop or Ladder.

Create the Entry order first.
Click Smart Orders to open the Smart Order options
Click Take Profit / Exit Ladder to activate this option
Choose:

Scales: for a ladder order of 2 to 10 targets, where Altrady works out the sizes and prices of each target based on your chosen settings
or Targets: choose your own exit prices and sizes for 1 to 10 targets

Some exchanges have strict rate limits, which require Altrady to submit your orders over a period of time or across API signals. Ensure that you have any “Extra Keys” as required for your exchange to facilitate this process. At the time of writing, Poloniex and Kraken require extra keys. If you have rate limit errors with your ladder orders, check the documentation for your exchange/s for how to add extra keys.

Scales

Create an entry order first.
Click the slider next to Take Profit to activate this option.
Choose:

Scales: for a ladder order of 2 to 10 targets, where Altrady works out the sizes and prices of each target based on your chosen settings
or Targets: choose your own exit prices and sizes for 1 to 10 targets

Choose:

Fixed Price: for Take Profit orders that have a defined price and whose price can be edited freely.
Entry Price %: for Take Profit orders whose price is based on a percentage distance from the entry order(s).

Set how much of the total position should be closed by the Take Profit orders. Any percentage below 100% will result in extra coins remaining in balance.
Select whether open orders should remain open, when Take Profit orders are executed. E.g. if enabled, DCA orders will remain open, even after a Take Profit order has filled.
Set the the price at which the first Take Profit order will be placed. I.e. the beginning of the price range within which Take Profit orders will be placed.
Set the price at which the last Take Profit order will be placed. I.e. the end of the price range within which the Take Profit orders will be placed.
Choose the number of Take Profit orders to be placed.
Set the price spacing type for Take Profit orders that are to be placed. I.e. how the price that each Take Profit order is placed at, is determined.
Set the size spacing type for Take Profit orders that are to be placed. I.e. how the quantity that each Take Profit order is assigned, is determined.

Scales: Order Details

Profit Volume: Choose the total amount of your Entry position to Exit—from 1% to 100%.

A) Type a number in the box OR

B) Drag the slider (from 0% to 100%) OR

C) Click one of the percentage presets below.

D) Choose whether open orders should be cancelled when Take Profit orders are executed.

If using a Ladder ENTRY, initially the assumed position size for your Exit is based on your first Ladder step position size. As more entries are filled, your position size for each Exit will be increased.

The Profit Volume slider does not impact Stop Loss and Trailing Stop Loss — their size will always be 100% of the position size, regardless of what the slider is set to. The Profit Volume slider only impacts Take Profit order sizes.

Enter Start and End Price

You can specify the Start and End Prices in three ways:

Click the eyedropper icon then click on a price in the chart to select that price.
Type the price in the box. To edit an existing price by overtyping, select the whole value first with the mouse or keyboard.
Choose from current prices: Bid, Ask or Last.

Once a price is entered, you can also drag the Price Handle in the chart up or down to change the order price.

Select the number of orders for your Ladder, from 2 to 10.

Price Scale

Price scale offers 3 pre-defined options for spacing the orders between your Start and End price:

Linear: Equal spacing
Exponential: Order spacing is based on: 1:1:2:4:8:16 …. pattern. The tighter spacing is always closest to the Start Price, and wider spacing near the End price.
Fibonacci: Order spacing is based on the Fibonacci series. For 10 orders the distances between orders (from the Start price) is: 9%, 5.6%, 9%, 14.6%, 11.8%, 11.8%, 17%, 9.8%, 11.4%. When fewer than 10 orders are specified, there is a larger gap between the lower prices as levels are combined, e.g. for 8 orders: 9%, 5.6%, 9%, 14.6%, 11.8%, 11.8%, 38.2%. As for the Exponential option, since orders bunch towards the Start price, you can choose whether this should be the High or Low price for your Ladder.

Selecting the Price Scale

Exponential Price Scale with Start price = low price. Orders bunched near low price.

Exponential Price Scale with Start price = high price. Orders bunched near high price.

Size Scale

The Size Scale option offers 5 presets for determining the size of each order in the Ladder.

These are:

Equal: the same amount will be used for each order
Linear: each order size is an equal amount greater than the previous order.
Linear Reverse: each order size is an equal amount less than the previous order.
Exponential: Each order is double the size of the previous order
Exponential Reverse: Each order is half the size of the previous order

Selecting the Size Scale

With a large number of orders and/or small total exit order size, Exponential and Exponential reverse can result in very small orders, potentially too small to meet the minimum size required by the exchange.

Since Binance has a minimum order size of 5 USDT, orders below this value will be rejected by the exchange. Note that the Take Profit orders will NOT fail, until the following occurs:

Initial entry order is placed and filled.
Exit orders (i.e. Take Profit orders) are placed.

The minimum order size required by the exchange can be checked in the Trading Widget, prior to creating Take Profit orders.

Attempting to create an entry order for a very small size will display an error message, indicating the minimum order amount required, as shown below.

Confirm that all Take Profit orders are valid before placement, according to the minimum order amount required by the exchange.

All Take Profit orders are valued above the minimum required by the exchange (i.e. 5 USDT)

Following this, add any other Smart Order options, such as Stop Loss, Entry Expiry or Time-Based Auto-Close.

To learn more about other Smart Order options, refer to the following category within the knowledgebase: Trading Essentials

Then click: Place Order.

Targets

In brief: how to place a Take Profit: Targets exit.

Targets Exit: Details

Target Price. Choose here whether you prefer to specify your Exits as a:

Fixed price: input the actual prices (e.g. 1.107, 1.129, 1.149…).
Or Entry Price %: input the percentage from the average Entry price where you wish to take profit (e.g. 5%, 10%)

Type of targets

Profit Volume (shortcut): Choose the total amount of your Entry position to Exit—from 1% to 100%.

a) Type a number in the box.

b) Drag the slider (from 0% to 100%) OR

c) Click one of the percentage presets below.

Initially, one target will be visible. Click + Add Target to add as many additional targets as you need. By default, each target will be allocated an equal share of the total position.

Entering Targets using Profit Volume: Fixed Price

Choose your own prices for each exit target.

Targets: Price

For each Target you can specify a price in three ways:

a. Click the Eyedropper icon then click on a price in the chart to select that price.

b. Type the price in the box. To edit an existing price by overtyping, select the whole value first with the mouse or keyboard.

c. Choose from current prices: Bid, Ask or Last

Once a price is entered, you can also drag the Price Handle in the chart up or down to change the order price.

Any Target can be deleted by clicking x Remove next to it.

When a target is removed, the position percentages will all return to the default values, i.e. equally divided between targets.

Position % for each Target

By default, the amount of the position to be exited at each target will be equally divided between targets.

You can change the proportion to exit at each target by entering a number or dragging the slider. As you do this the Position % of all other targets will be adjusted to compensate.

The proportions are based on the amount of your position that you have decided to Exit, and will add up to 100%. They are rounded to the nearest whole number, and if the number of targets does not divide evenly into 100, the remainder will be added to the last target (e.g. for 3 targets: 33%, 33%, 34%)

Entering Targets using Profit Volume: Position %

Choose percentage profit for each exit target.

Targets: Entry Price %

For each Target, choose the percentage profit. This can be entered in three ways:

a. Type the percentage profit in the Price % box. To edit an existing percentage by overtyping, select the whole value first with the mouse or keyboard.

b. Drag the percentage slider.

c. Choose from the percentages shown under the slider (1%, 2%, 5% etc...)

Position % for each Target

The position percentages work in the same way whether you enter targets using Prices or Percentages.

By default, the amount of the position to be exited at each target will be equally divided between targets.

You can change the proportion to exit at each target by entering a number or dragging the slider. As you do this the Position % of all other targets will be adjusted to compensate.

Place the Order

Add any other Smart Order options, such as Stop Loss, Entry Expiry or Time-Based Auto-Close.

To learn more about other Smart Order options, refer to the following category within the knowledgebase: Trading Essentials

Then click: Place Order.

Updated on: 29/08/2025

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!