Direction, amount, term, and leverage

The ticket has four controls. Together they describe a position. Everything else on the ticket is calculated from them.

Direction

Long pays if the settlement price is above your target. Short pays if it is below.

That is the whole decision. You pay for the right to be paid if the price finishes on your side of a line, with no borrowing and no margin.

Budget

The USDC you are willing to spend on the position:

It sets your position size together with leverage.
It is the most you can lose. Nothing is ever taken from you after this.
It is paid once, at open. There is no funding while you hold, and no fee when the position settles.

The minimum is $10. The maximum depends on the pool: a single position cannot be more than a small share of the pool's value, and the ticket tells you if you are over it.

The amount charged can come in under your budget, because target prices come in steps of 0.25%. The ticket's You pay / max loss shows the exact figure, and the difference stays in your wallet.

Term

How long until the position settles: 1, 3, 7, or 30 days. The ticket shows the exact date and hour, because settlement lands on a fixed schedule rather than exactly one day from the moment you click.

Term changes the trade in two ways:

More time costs more. For the same amount and leverage, a longer term pushes your worthless price further from today's price, because each unit of exposure is more expensive when it has longer to work.
More time to be right. A 30-day position survives a week of going the wrong way. A 1-day position does not get that chance.

There is no way to close before the term ends. Pick a term you are happy to wait out.

Leverage

5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, or 100x. Leverage sets how much a move pays. Pay $500 at 25x and you hold a $12,500 position, so every 1% past your target is worth $125. Double the leverage and you double the win.

Higher leverage also means higher risk. Your Worthless at or below and Profit above prices move further from today's price, so the market has further to go before you are paid: a bigger payout at lower odds. What leverage means here shows two tickets side by side.

Leverage does not create a liquidation price. A 100x position that goes the wrong way for six days and comes back on the seventh pays out in full.

How the four fit together

You change	Position size	Worthless price	Chance of paying	Payout per 1% move past target
More money	Bigger	Same	Same	Bigger
Longer term	Same	Further away	Roughly similar	Same
Higher leverage	Bigger	A little further away	Lower	Bigger

One rule of thumb covers most of it. Every 1% the price settles past your worthless price is worth leverage percent of what you paid. At 25x, each 1% is 25% of your stake. At 100x, each 1% is your whole stake back.