onboarding

Trade Analytics — what your behavior is really telling you

Volume, timing patterns, size distribution, per-strategy split: the microscope on your trading

6 min · beginner

What you'll have when finished

  • Read the 6 KPIs and know what they each prove
  • Use the time-of-day heatmap to discover your actual trading hours
  • Spot over-concentration before Risk Intelligence flags it
  • Choose between Trade Analytics, Quant Desk, and Risk Intelligence for any given question

Before you start

  • Trade Analytics does NOT compute P&L. That requires the cost-basis engine (in flight). The page shows behavior, not returns.
  • All times are UTC. A 9 PM EST trade shows at 02:00 in the heatmap.

Walkthrough

  1. The 6 KPIs at the top — what each one really tells you

    **Total Trades** — count of filled trades in the window. Behavior signal: how active you are. **Total Volume** — USD sum across all surfaces. Scale signal: how big your operation is. **Avg Trade Size** — Total Volume ÷ Total Trades. If this is rising over time, you're sizing up. If falling, you're churning more small trades (often a profitability red flag). **Active Days** — out of the window length, how many days you actually traded. Low ratio = passive/sporadic. High ratio = engaged. **Best Day** — your biggest single-day USD volume + the date. Sanity check: was it planned or impulse? **Longest Streak** — consecutive active days. Behavioral consistency signal. Streaks that broke at exactly N days are worth journaling.

    Success criteria: Read every KPI · Identified one KPI that looked surprising

  2. Cumulative Volume chart — the shape matters

    Running USD volume from window start to today. **Smooth steady upward curve** — disciplined consistent trader. **Stair-step (big jumps then flat)** — you trade in bursts. Usually around news events. Self-aware bursting is fine; impulse bursting is a problem. **Front-loaded (heavy early, flat later)** — common pattern of strategy abandonment. Check whether your bots are still running. **Hockey stick (recent steep rise)** — you've started scaling up. Make sure risk management scales with size.

    Success criteria: Identified which shape your curve resembles

  3. Time-of-Day Heatmap — find your real trading hours

    A 7-day × 24-hour grid in UTC. Each cell shows trade count; darker = more trades. Use it to discover: - **Are you a session trader?** Concentrated activity in 4-8 hour blocks = you trade specific market hours intentionally. - **Are you a 24/7 trader?** Even spread = automated bots dominating your flow. - **Are you an impulse trader?** Random scattered spikes = trades driven by alerts/news rather than a plan. The honest version: most retail traders THINK they trade a plan and SEE that their heatmap reveals impulse patterns. The first time you look at this, you may not like what you find. That's the value.

    Success criteria: Identified your top 2-3 most active hour windows

  4. Trade Size Distribution — are you a tortoise or a hare?

    Histogram of how your trades distribute across size buckets. **Single right-skewed peak** — most trades small, occasional bigger ones. Most active traders look like this. **Bimodal (two peaks)** — two distinct strategies running. Check Performance by Strategy table to confirm. **Wide spread** — you're inconsistent in sizing. CV in Risk Intelligence will be high. Position-sizing rules (Smart Trade caps, Kelly fraction) help. **Heavy left tail** — many tiny trades, few big ones. Common in DCA users. Usually fine.

    Success criteria: Identified your distribution shape

  5. Performance by Strategy — which surface dominates?

    Per-source table — CEX, Smart Trade, Algo (TWAP/VWAP/Iceberg/Bracket), DEX Swap, DEX Limit, Futures. If 80%+ of your trades are on ONE surface, you're under-using the platform. The strongest setups blend 2-3 surfaces — e.g.: - **CEX** for spot in liquid majors - **DEX Swap** for tokens not on your CEX - **Smart Trade or Grid Bot** for set-and-forget exposure on assets you'd hold anyway If a surface shows zero, you've never executed on it. Connection alone doesn't count.

    Success criteria: Identified your top-2 surfaces by volume · Decided whether to diversify across more surfaces

  6. Per-pair performance — concentration check

    Every symbol you traded with trade count and USD volume. Click "Volume" or "Trades" to sort. Concentration check: if your top pair is >60% of total volume, your "portfolio" is effectively a single-asset bet. Risk Intelligence will confirm this with HHI math, but you can see it visually here first. For diversification: aim for 4-6 pairs each making up 10-25% of volume, not one pair dominating.

    Success criteria: Computed your top-pair share · Decided whether diversification is warranted

What's next

Trade Analytics tells you WHAT happened. To dig into WHETHER it was good and WHERE the risk lives: - For Sharpe vs benchmark / HODL counterfactual / correlation / fee impact → [Quant Desk](/quant-desk) - For concentration risk math + anomaly flagging → [Risk Intelligence](/risk) - For per-trade fees, gas, and timing → [Trading Journal](/journal)