# RealPnL: the Swarm trading bot's real P&L, in public

> RealPnL is the public, unedited trade record of Swarm, a crypto futures trading bot: every trade, loss and rule change, rebuilt from the bot's own records every 10 minutes.

Swarm is a systematic trend-following strategy for crypto perpetual futures on Binance and Hyperliquid. It holds a few of the largest coins at a time, long or short, with a stop-loss on every position. The site lives at https://realpnl.live.

Key facts (as of 30 September 2026, 06:32 UTC):

- Binance account [DEMO: exchange demo account, simulated money]: -1.30% since 27 September 2026, worst drop -1.5%, 12 trades, 4 open positions.
- Hyperliquid account [PAPER: simulated fills at live prices, no orders sent]: -1.37% since 27 September 2026, worst drop -1.6%, 5 trades, 4 open positions.
- No account trades real money yet. A real-money account will be labelled LIVE and linked to its public exchange page.
- Approach: systematic trend-following on large crypto perpetual futures (Binance, Hyperliquid), long or short, volatility-based sizing, a stop-loss on the exchange for every position, at most 25% of the account in one coin.
- Goal: 20-40% a year over a full market cycle. This is a target, not a promise.
- 2021-2025 comparison (per year): Swarm backtest 43.5% after fees and funding (hypothetical, worst drop -18.8%); Bitcoin buy-and-hold 24.8% (worst drop -77%); S&P 500 total return 14.3%; hedge funds (HFRI Fund Weighted Composite) 7.1%.
- Backtest (hypothetical, Jan 2021 to Sep 2026, 0.07% cost per trade): 45.7% a year, Sharpe 1.67, worst drop -18.5%; 41.8% a year after Binance's real funding payments. Much weaker from 2024 on (Sharpe about 1.1; 2025 made about 7%).
- Exposure: the account is set to 5x leverage, but positions averaged 0.30x the account in the backtest and peaked at 1.02x.
- Minimum sensible copy size: about $1,000 (7% of orders fall below Binance minimums), $2,500+ for a close copy.
- Copy trading on Binance and a Hyperliquid vault are planned but not open yet.
- Copy-trading facts used on this site: Binance minimum copy 10 USDT, default lead profit share 10%; Hyperliquid user vaults 10% leader share, 1-day withdrawal lock-up. Copier costs for our book: about 3%/yr fees and slippage, 2.7%/yr funding, plus the profit share. Sensible minimum copy on Binance: $1,000 (7% of orders unplaceable), $2,500 for a faithful copy.
- Not financial advice. Leveraged futures can lose money quickly.

## Main pages

- [Performance](https://realpnl.live/performance/): every trade, open positions, monthly returns, equity curve
- [Approach](https://realpnl.live/strategy/): how the strategy works, at a high level, and what the backtest says
- [Questions](https://realpnl.live/faq/): short answers to common questions
- [Copy the bot](https://realpnl.live/copy/): how copying will work on Binance and Hyperliquid, costs, who should not copy
- [Risk and disclosure](https://realpnl.live/risk/): risks, how to read the numbers, referral disclosure
- [About](https://realpnl.live/about/): who runs it and how the site is built

## Research (backtests behind each rule)

- [Long-only vs long/short](https://realpnl.live/research/does-shorting-help/): The same rules run long-only, short-only and long/short, January 2021 to September 2026.
- [Transaction-cost sensitivity](https://realpnl.live/research/fees-and-slippage/): The same rules re-run at six cost levels, from zero to 0.25% per unit traded.
- [Funding drag, 2021–2026](https://realpnl.live/research/funding-costs/): Binance's historical funding rates applied to every position the backtest held since January 2021.
- [Drawdown anatomy](https://realpnl.live/research/how-bad-does-it-get/): Every peak-to-trough decline deeper than 8% in the backtest, with its depth, duration and recovery.
- [Gross exposure vs venue leverage](https://realpnl.live/research/leverage-actually-used/): What the book actually held, as a multiple of equity, against the 5× the venue allowed.
- [Passive execution on exits: a live finding](https://realpnl.live/research/maker-orders-on-exits/): Two days of Binance Demo fills: passive maker orders on entries versus exits.
- [Minimum viable copy size](https://realpnl.live/research/small-accounts-minimum-orders/): Every backtest order checked against Binance's minimum order values, for copy accounts from $100 to $5,000.

## Guides (explainers, with the strategy's own data)

- [Crypto perpetual futures, explained](https://realpnl.live/guides/perpetual-futures-explained/): The contract behind most crypto trading volume: what you actually hold, who pays whom every eight hours, and where the money leaks.
- [Leverage, exposure and liquidation: the numbers](https://realpnl.live/guides/leverage-margin-liquidation/): The leverage number on a trader's profile is a margin setting. Risk lives in exposure, and the two can differ by an order of magnitude.
- [How copy trading works on Binance, and where it breaks](https://realpnl.live/guides/copy-trading-binance-guide/): Your account mirrors the lead's orders, not their results. The difference is fees, funding, minimum order sizes and the amount you copy with.
- [Risk management for crypto futures: what a systematic book does](https://realpnl.live/guides/risk-management-crypto-futures/): Risk management is not a stop-loss. It is a set of limits that decide size before entry, cut risk without discretion, and never require anyone to be brave.
- [Money management for copiers: how much, and what to expect](https://realpnl.live/guides/how-much-to-allocate/): Sizing an allocation is a question about drawdowns, not returns. Here is what the record says a week, a month and a year look like.
- [How to read a trading track record, and how to spot a fake one](https://realpnl.live/guides/how-to-read-a-track-record/): Five numbers explain most of a record. Everything else is presentation, and presentation is where the fakes live.
- [Trend following in crypto: what it is, when it works, when it doesn't](https://realpnl.live/guides/trend-following-crypto/): Trend following does not predict. It sizes into moves that have started and out of moves that have ended, and accepts many small losses for a few large gains.
- [Crypto copy trading: how it works and how to choose whom to copy](https://realpnl.live/guides/crypto-copy-trading-guide/): Copy trading routes someone else's orders into your account. The mechanics are simple; choosing whom to copy is where the money is made or lost.
- [Is copy trading profitable? What the numbers say](https://realpnl.live/guides/is-copy-trading-profitable/): Copying a profitable strategy is not the same as profiting from it. Four things stand between the lead's return and yours, and one of them is you.
- [Copy trading risks, and what limits each one](https://realpnl.live/guides/copy-trading-risks/): The lead's strategy is one risk among nine. The others live in the platform, the copy settings and the copier.
- [Hyperliquid vaults: copy trading on-chain, explained](https://realpnl.live/guides/hyperliquid-vaults-explained/): A vault is one account, many depositors, every position on-chain. It removes the per-order minimum problem and adds a lock-up and a protocol risk.
- [Copy trading, trading bots, or doing it yourself](https://realpnl.live/guides/copy-trading-vs-bots/): Running a strategy yourself buys control at the price of operations. Copying buys the execution and the operations at the price of a profit share.
- [Copy trading fees, explained with a worked example](https://realpnl.live/guides/copy-trading-fees-explained/): Four charges, one of them invisible on the leaderboard. On a $2,500 copy of our book they add up to roughly $140 a year plus a tenth of the profit.

## Journal

- [Launch log, 27–29 September: five findings from demo trading](https://realpnl.live/journal/launch-log-first-three-days/)

## Data

- [Public record as JSON](https://realpnl.live/data/record.json): the same numbers as the performance page
- [Journal RSS](https://realpnl.live/journal/feed.xml)