10 Reasons Why You Need to Use a Grid Trading Bot
With the prices of cryptocurrencies swinging widely within minutes and markets opening 24 hours every day, it's hard for traders to keep up.
For starters, crypto traders may not be able to react quickly enough to take advantage of opportunities to profit from rapid price swings. Furthermore, delays in transactions or exchange executions further worsen the problem. Traders cannot monitor all the crypto exchanges and global markets round the clock to achieve optimal trading results.
Fortunately, this is the age of automation. For many investors, bots (short for robots) that run bits of code to trade and execute transactions offer solutions to these problems.
This article will look at the grid trading bot — a bot that adopts the grid trading strategy — how it works, and its benefits to users.
What Is a Grid Trading Strategy?
Grid trading is a trading strategy that involves placing orders above and below a set price using a “price grid” of orders. The price grid consists of orders at incrementally increasing and decreasing prices. For instance, you may set buy orders at every $500 below the current market price of ETH, and sell orders every $500 above ETH’s current price. The grid trading bot automatically buys when the price falls to the predetermined level, and again if the price drops by another $500. The reverse occurs when the price of ETH starts to climb.
The basic premise of this strategy is to repeatedly buy at the pre-specified price, and then sell the position when the price rises above that level. Conversely, you can sell at a predetermined price point and wait for the price to fall to a set level and buy — repeatedly.
A grid trading strategy is easily automated, and valuable for forex currency trading and crypto trading. It’s especially useful when prices move within a specific range or a “sideways market,” where assets fluctuate within a tight range for an extended time without going in a particular direction. Prices oscillate within the borders of price support and resistance.
Grid trading strategies attempt to make money whenever the price of an asset changes. However, there’s a trade-off: The more orders a grid trading system has, the higher the trading frequency and, consequently, the lower the profit from each order.
Bybit has finalized plans to introduce a built-in grid trading bot in its trading mechanics. Users can easily automate buy and sell orders placed at predetermined intervals by customizing the grid limits — upper and lower — and the number of grids. Once the set-up is complete, the system will automatically buy or sell orders at these preset prices.
Crypto trading can be taxing and time-intensive. However, when properly deployed, bots can take away some of the hassles while optimizing your profits. Here are ten reasons you need a grid trading bot so you can profit in both Spot and Futures markets.
1. Low entry point
Using a grid trading bot, you can enter positions at levels you might not be able to achieve by trading manually. Without the need to continuously monitor price fluctuations, you can have orders at several low entry points. Conversely, you’ll also be placing orders to be executed at higher selling levels, or placing the trades at extreme levels.
2. Easy to use and customizable
The grid trading bot is straightforward to use and easily customizable. Once you sign up, you can configure the parameters as you wish. Generally, you can adjust the upper and lower limits of the price range, and set the number of orders the bot can place within this price range, as well as the width between each buy-sell limit order.
Users don't need to know or calculate complex metrics and measurements, or study market indicators. Since it's “plug and play,” anyone without extensive crypto trading experience can set up a grid trading bot in minutes. The underlying grid strategy doesn’t require new traders to understand complex market signals, indicators, and algorithms.
3. High automation level
Grid trading bots lend themselves to a high level of automation. This is because the underlying trading strategy is highly logical. Bots are designed to perform predetermined tasks unrelated to the market sentiments and trends. Grid trading bots efficiently employ the grid trading strategy, which would be too intricate to execute with manual trading.
Since grid trading bots are easy to set up and use, they can be used in virtually any currency market. It’s a great starting point for traders who don’t plan to monitor the market constantly.
4. Turn strategies into profit during a quiet market
Grid trading bots have the unique advantage of turning a profit in a time of market doldrums. Deservedly, cryptocurrencies have earned a reputation for volatility. But now and then, the markets trade within a range, though they might still move wildly within that range. Rather than have your crypto assets hibernate along with the market, you can use grid trading strategies to capitalize on a market where you may not have much conviction.
5. Enhance risk management
A grid trading bot can help you enhance your risk management capabilities. The settings you configure directly impact your profitability. Most importantly, it gives you control over the risk-reward level.
You can earn a small but steady profit with minimal risks when you bet on stablecoin pairs involving USD tether, for example. Conversely, you can choose to whet your risk appetite and go for bigger stakes and chunkier returns, trading coins with low market cap and high volatility.
The ability of trading bots to adjust your risks in line with your appetite is an excellent tool for enhancing your risk management skills.
6. Provide liquidity
Using the grid trading strategy via bots essentially means you provide much-needed liquidity for the exchange. You increase the market liquidity of the exchange by placing buy and sell orders, which makes grid trading an excellent strategy for market making. The bot can provide liquidity on a specific cryptocurrency by placing a bid-and-ask limit order on an exchange.
Grid trading bots ensure you'll pay the maker fee as well because makers provide liquidity to an exchange by "creating or making a market" for other traders. In contrast, takers remove liquidity by “taking” available orders. Maker fees are usually lower to incentivize market makers. Since a grid trading strategy provides liquidity, users pay the lower maker fees.
Illiquid markets with thin order books (order books with fewer offers at different price levels, which increase slippage) tend to benefit from a grid trading strategy. They’re marked by large price spikes, which occur frequently. The grid trading bot eats up these spikes by providing liquidity and converting them into profit for the trader. This also helps anyone trading the illiquid pair try to get a fair price.
7. Versatility
Grid trading bots can be used in any market, and with reasonable potential to make a profit. They’re versatile — because the core underlying strategy proceeds based on the idea of buying low and selling high (and pocketing the difference). Thus, grid trading bots can trade profitably without being affected by market sentiments and trends.
You also have the liberty of configuring the bot and selecting prices ranges and the number of grids, which helps you define the frequency and period. You can tweak the bot for the short term, where it makes small profits by trading frequently in a short interval. Or you can set it up to run for longer periods with less frequency, and earn profit from more significant price shifts.
8. Diversification
Grid trading bots can help you earn some extra profit if you intend to hold on to two exchangeable assets for the long haul. One of the primary tenets of investing is diversification, which is spreading your funds among multiple assets, rather than a single one. Rather than simply holding, you can earn extra profit by using the grid trading strategy to make more money from the fluctuations between the prices of the multiple assets in your portfolio.
9. Suitable for both short- and long-term trading
Grid trading as a strategy has been used in other types of markets, such as forex. All kinds of traders — including scalpers, day traders, swing traders and position traders — can take advantage of grid trading bots for managing risk and maximizing profits.
Traders who prefer quick returns can set up the trading bot to function for the short term, catching hundreds of trades from the small price movements within a short period. Long-term traders can set up a huge grid range in which trades can run for a longer period, ranging from weeks to months.
10. Remove emotions from trading
Naturally, traders are prone to many emotions — including anger, greed, and fear — when money is involved. It’s challenging to keep these unbridled emotions in check when trading manually. Grid trading bots can help implement a rule-based grid strategy, minimizing the involvement of emotions in trading.
Trading bots operate according to a defined set of rules, like fixed profit taking or stop-loss points. If you’re planning to employ a consistent strategy, grid trading bots are useful for carrying out disciplined and controlled trades.
The Bottom Line
Grid trading bots are automated trading tools that adopt the grid trading strategy, a trading system that allows you to profit by placing a series of long or short orders at predetermined intervals around a set price, creating a trading grid. Easy to use and set up, these bots can help you execute trades profitably and efficiently, saving you money, time — and stress. Get started with by creating your own grid trading bot so you can easily invest in both Spot and Futures markets today!
We hope this Bybit trading bot guide has been useful for you in your pursuit of automated investing and trading. Here's all the facts about our trading bots, summarized in one simple infographic.