{"slug":"top-trader-ratio","term":"Top Trader Long/Short Ratio","category":"Derivatives","definition":"The top trader long/short ratio is the long-versus-short split among the largest accounts on an exchange — on Binance, the top 20% by margin balance — reported by account count and, separately, weighted by position size. It is the closest public reading of what the big money is positioned for, as opposed to the crowd.","street":"Same coin, two crowds: the retail ratio says what everyone thinks, the top-trader ratio says what the people with size are actually holding.","depth":["Weight matters. The account version counts each large trader once; the position version weights them by how much they hold, so a single whale short can flip it. When the position-weighted number diverges from the account number, a few big positions are leaning one way — that is worth more than a thousand small accounts agreeing. Our board reports the gap between top-trader positions and the crowd: eight points or more is a real disagreement.","The classic pattern is the crowd 62%+ long while top traders sit at 50% or below — retail chasing a move the size is fading. It does not mean price drops now; it means the crowded side has weak hands and the strong hands are not underneath them. Read it with taker flow: top traders long, crowd short and takers buying is the setup for a squeeze of the shorts; the mirror is a long liquidation cascade waiting for a catalyst."],"live":{"label":"Top traders vs the crowd, per coin","href":"/tools/long-short"},"related":["long-short-ratio","taker-buy-sell-ratio","whale","liquidation-cascade"]}