The "profit" shown on the grid page may not be the money you actually earned — it could be just "paper profit." If your grid profit is a positive number, but your total return shows a loss, that means some of the loss is hidden in the "unpaired profit." You need to break these concepts down to see where your money really went.
Step 1: Break Down the Components of Total Return
First, understand what kind of "profit" you're seeing. OKX's grid strategy total return has two parts:
Total Return = Grid Profit + Unpaired Profit
The key takeaway: Grid profit and unpaired profit are both floating values based on theoretical calculations — they are not actual profits that have already landed in your account.
Grid profit: The price difference gains from completed "buy low, sell high" order pairs (after deducting trading fees). This is the money the strategy earned by catching price swings.
Unpaired profit: The remaining part of total return that is not grid profit. It includes the floating PnL of your current open positions, funding fees, and some trading fee differences.
Step 2: Find the Loss Items Inside "Unpaired Profit"
If total return is negative while grid profit is positive, it means unpaired profit is a large negative number, canceling out the money made by the grid. The losses in unpaired profit usually come from:
Floating loss on open positions: You still hold coins that haven't been sold yet. If the current market price is below your purchase price, this paper loss goes directly into unpaired profit as a negative value.
Market order fee difference: The grid calculates profit using low maker fees by default. But if an order fills as a taker during volatile markets, the actual fee is higher. That extra fee gets added to unpaired profit as a negative.
Liquidation costs: If a futures grid gets force-liquidated due to insufficient margin, the liquidation fee is also counted inside unpaired profit.
Price differences: The gap between the actual fill price and the theoretical grid price also shows up in unpaired profit.
Risk reminder: The floating loss in unpaired profit is not fixed. If the price keeps moving against your position, the floating loss will keep growing, and the hole in your total return will get bigger. Also, if you use high leverage on a futures grid and get liquidated, the liquidation fee is taken straight from your margin — that money also shows up as a loss in unpaired profit.
Step 3: Check Profit and Loss Details in Order History
Don't just look at the overall numbers on the strategy dashboard. Go to the trade history and recalculate based on the actual fill prices.
What to do: Go to the strategy details page and view "Order History."
How to do it:
Filter all "Sell" records and compare each one against its corresponding buy price.
Manually calculate: sell price - buy price - fees for both sides. See if the actual profit you get matches the "grid profit" shown.
If an order shows a profit in the records but is not included in grid profit, that profit may have become a floating part of unpaired profit.
Completion standard: Identify the specific orders or open positions inside unpaired profit that are dragging down your total return.
How to verify after taking action: On the strategy details page, look at the "Grid Profit" and "Unpaired Profit" numbers. If grid profit is positive and unpaired profit is a large negative, it means floating losses on open positions are eating up your profit. After you click "Stop Strategy" and choose "Close at Market," the system will force-close all positions. At that moment, the floating PnL inside unpaired profit becomes realized PnL, and you'll see the final actual loss.
Next step after checking: If you confirm the floating loss is the cause and you still believe the market will recover, you can keep the strategy running and wait for prices to bounce back. If you think the market will continue trending in one direction, it's better to stop the strategy early to limit losses and prevent the unpaired loss from growing larger. After manually stopping the strategy, all pending orders will be canceled, and the open positions will be closed at market price — your funds will return to your trading account.
