Gate Contract Trading: Short-term Play and Long-term Strategy, How to Choose the Trading Approach?

On Gate’s contract trading platform, there are hundreds of small-cap contracts and a contract market depth ranking second globally, providing a rich selection for traders of different styles. In 2025, the number of contract trading users on the Gate platform experienced significant growth, with a growth rate exceeding 200%.

01 Short-term vs. Long-term: A Completely Different Contract World

Short-term contract trading and medium- to long-term contract investing are essentially two entirely different games. Short-term trading is like a race of speed and passion, while medium- and long-term investing is more like a marathon that requires patience.

Short-term traders typically focus on 15-minute to 4-hour chart changes, using short-term market fluctuations to generate profits. This strategy requires traders to constantly monitor market dynamics and make quick decisions. On the Gate platform, short-term traders especially favor newly listed small-cap contracts, some tokens like VIRTUAL have seen gains of up to 10 times, providing huge opportunities for short-term trading.

Medium- and long-term traders focus on larger market cycles, analyzing daily, weekly, or even monthly trend levels. These traders do not pursue short-term quick profits but instead base their decisions on fundamental analysis and macroeconomic trends, establishing and holding positions for weeks or even months.

Comparison of short-term and medium- to long-term strategies: | Strategy Dimension | Short-term Trading | Medium- and Long-term Investing |

|----------|----------|------------|

| Time Frame | Minutes to hours | Several weeks to months |

| Focus | Technical indicators, market sentiment | Fundamentals, macroeconomic trends |

| Trading Frequency | High | Low |

| Return Expectation | Pursuit of quick small profits | Targeting trend large movements |

| Suitable for | Investors with ample time and quick reactions | Patients and good at analysis |

| Risk Characteristics | Highly affected by market noise | Highly affected by systemic risk |

02 Practical Short-term Strategies: Capturing Momentary Fluctuations

For short-term traders, the tools and features provided by the Gate platform can greatly enhance trading efficiency and success rates. Grid trading robots are effective assistants in ranging markets, employing a high-buy-low-sell-high trading mode that intelligently manages oscillating trends.

For example, the contract grid neutral robot on Gate can automatically identify market fluctuation ranges and buy when prices fall, sell when prices rise, thus achieving automated profit accumulation. Backtesting shows that this robot outperforms traditional manual trading strategies under various market conditions.

Chasing rises and selling declines is another common short-term strategy, especially in small-cap trading. Gate continuously launches new contracts rapidly around popular sectors like AI and MEME, including AIXBT, AI6Z, FARTCOIN, and PENGU.

The core of short-term trading is strict risk control. “Low leverage, strict stop-loss, no holding through” is the survival rule for contract trading in ranging markets. On the Gate platform, investors can use OCO orders (One Cancels the Other), which combine a take-profit order and a stop-loss order. When one executes, the other is automatically canceled.

03 Medium- to Long-term Layout: Waiting for Trends and Value

Medium- and long-term contract traders need more patience and a broader macro perspective. Cash-and-carry arbitrage is a classic long-term strategy, involving holding both spot and futures short positions to hedge against price volatility.

When investors hold Bitcoin spot, they can simultaneously open a short contract on the Gate platform. If the spot price falls and the funding rate is positive, the profit from the contract will offset the spot loss, while also earning the corresponding funding fee.

Gate’s perpetual contracts support a dual-position mode, allowing users to hold both long and short positions on the same contract. This mode provides greater flexibility, enabling traders to capture long opportunities when the market rises, and profit from short positions when the market falls.

For medium- and long-term investors, features like time-slice and segmented orders are particularly useful. Time-slice orders split large orders into multiple smaller ones, placing them at set intervals to reduce market impact. Segmented orders allow users to split large orders within specified price ranges, using modes like averaging, increasing, or decreasing to place orders flexibly.

04 Trading Tools and Risk Control: Ensuring Both Strategies

Whether short-term or medium- to long-term, risk control is key to success. The Gate platform offers various stop-loss strategies, with the basic being trailing stop profit. This strategy automatically adjusts the trigger price based on market price fluctuations, especially suitable for trending markets.

When prices move favorably, trailing stop orders adjust their trigger points accordingly to maximize gains. For more complex risk management, Gate also provides MMR automatic stop-loss based on maintenance margin ratios, helping traders manage account risks.

Gate’s ladder-style liquidation mechanism provides an effective buffer against risk. When a position is triggered for liquidation, if the position size is too large, the system lowers the risk limit of the contract position by one tier and liquidates the excess portion. This mechanism reduces leverage step-by-step by gradually decreasing positions, alleviating margin pressure.

05 Gate Platform: A Trading Ecosystem Supporting Multiple Strategies

The reason Gate can support both short-term and long-term strategies lies in its comprehensive product design and market coverage. The platform currently supports over 4,300 digital assets, ranking first globally among centralized exchanges (CEX), covering mainstream and emerging tokens to meet diverse investment needs.

In terms of contract products, Gate has launched hundreds of small-cap contracts, making it one of the platforms with the most contract varieties. Its extensive market coverage provides traders of different strategies with abundant trading options.

For novice investors, Gate offers a contract demo account, allowing users to trade with virtual funds and experience the entire contract trading process in a zero-risk environment. For experienced traders, Gate’s market big data features provide comprehensive market information, including capital flows, contract positions, long-short ratios, and large orders.

Future Outlook

As the first light of dawn shines through the window, the short-term trader has already completed their third trade of the day, while the long-term investor’s position remains quietly waiting for the market’s spring. On the Gate platform, whether pursuing rapid gains like a 6x AI token or maintaining steady positions through dual-line holdings during market turbulence, everyone finds their rhythm in this trading ecosystem.

With over 48 million global users and an overall reserve rate of 125%, Gate forms the secure foundation of this multi-strategy trading world.