You can profit from rising XLM price by going long Stellar Lumen futures. And, when XLM price is falling, you can make profits by going short. This feature of futures trading enable you to navigate all types of market conditions profitably. Compare this with directly buying Stellar Lumen. When price is falling, you can either sell your Stellar Lumen or suffer losses. In spot trading, there is no way of profiting from falling prices.

If you are a HODLer, you can still use futures to mitigate price risk. Say, you hold XLM. You can mitigate the risks you face when Stellar Lumen is falling by going short XLM futures. In this case, a short futures position acts as a downside protection by effectively locking the $ value of your portfolio without the need for selling your Stellar Lumen. Judicious use of futures as hedge can make you a better and stronger HODLer.

Leverage enables you to open positions that are bigger than your trading capital. If you can open a position that is 10 times bigger than your trading capital, then you have 10x leverage available to you. The maximum allowed leverage for futures listed on Delta Exchange is as high as 100x. There are two ways of thinking about leverage:

• Leverage as capital efficiency driver : For opening a position of a given size, higher the leverage lower the trading capital required. The leverage in spot trading is always 1x, while it is 3-4x in margin trading. This means futures is 20 to 100 times more capital efficient than spot or margin trading.

• Leverage as a returns amplifier : Because in a leverage trade position size is greater than the capital deployed, impact of prices moves gets magnified. The return on capital deployed is leverage times the price return. This means that you can amplify your trading gains the effective use of leverage.