Liquidated but K-line didn’t hit your liquidation price? Check mark price and your records first

Trading Strategies

03 October 2026

The candlestick you see is drawn from the last traded price. But the price that triggered your liquidation is a different one.

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This difference is not just wordplay. In futures trading, two prices exist at the same time: the last traded price and the mark price. The K-line chart and price labels you see by default are almost always based on the last traded price. However, the liquidation systems on nearly all major exchanges only use the mark price. During sharp moves, the two prices can diverge noticeably. If the mark price touches your liquidation line first, your position is gone, even if the wick on your K-line chart never reached that level.

What mark price is and why it exists

Mark price is a "fair reference price" calculated by the exchange. It is used to calculate unrealized profit and loss and to decide liquidations. It is not the price of any single trade. Instead, it combines index prices from multiple major spot exchanges, adds a basis adjustment from the futures market, and is calculated using a median or weighted method.

Exchanges do this to prevent a single futures order book from being suddenly pumped or dumped and "accidentally" wiping out a batch of positions. Perpetual futures order books are shallower than spot markets. One large order can print a long wick on the order book. If liquidations used the last traded price directly, a large player could simply dump a big order during a low-liquidity moment and precisely trigger positions stacked at a certain level. Mark price anchors the reference to the deeper spot market, making single-point manipulation much more expensive.

The practical impact for you is this: unrealized profit and loss is also calculated using the mark price. You may see a nice floating profit on the K-line, but the number in the "position PnL" field is different, because that field uses the mark price.

First step in verification: switch your chart to mark price

Since liquidations use the mark price, you need to check that candlestick against the mark price.

In the chart settings on the trading page, find the price type switcher, usually in the upper right corner of the K-line chart or in the chart settings menu. Switch from "Last Price" or "最新价" to "Mark Price" or "标记价格". After switching, the shape of the candlesticks will change. The wick that did not touch your liquidation line before may now clearly pierce your liquidation price on the new chart.

When checking, you also need to confirm two things: the contract is the same, meaning the same futures contract, not a spot chart, and the time is the same. Compare the trigger time shown in your liquidation record and look at where the mark price was at that moment.

If the mark price did touch your liquidation line after switching, then there is no anomaly in the liquidation logic. The problem is that the default chart was showing a different price.

Second step: check your liquidation record and trade history

Mark price explains "why it was triggered", but your records can tell you "what actually happened".

Find the record in the futures liquidation history or order history. Focus on a few fields:

Liquidation trigger price. Some exchanges record the mark price used when the liquidation was triggered. If this number matches the mark price K-line you saw after switching, you can confirm the basis for the liquidation.

Actual average fill price. Liquidation is not executed at your liquidation price. The system closes the position with a market order as quickly as possible. During sharp moves, the fill price can be worse than the mark price trigger point. That is slippage. For a long position, if the liquidation price is 100, the actual fill could be 98 or even lower. The mark price triggers the "execution", but the fill price depends on the order book depth at the moment of closing.

Fee items. Liquidation usually involves two fees: a liquidation fee and a taker fee. The liquidation fee is calculated based on the maintenance margin tier of your position. The higher the tier, the higher the fee. This fee is a normal expense and is not refunded.

If the actual fill price in your record is clearly worse than the mark price trigger point, the extra loss was caused by slippage. This kind of loss is more common in low-liquidity altcoin futures or during extreme market conditions.

Stop loss and take profit can also be bypassed

If you had set a stop loss order but your position was still liquidated, check the trigger price type of the stop loss.

Exchanges allow you to choose whether a stop loss triggers on "last price" or "mark price". If you chose last price, and the mark price reached the liquidation line first, the stop loss order will never trigger. The system will execute the liquidation first and then cancel all open orders.

A practical approach: set your stop loss trigger price to mark price. That way, the stop loss and the liquidation use the same price source, and the stop loss at least has a chance to trigger before liquidation. The trade-off is that there may be a spread between the mark price and the final fill price, so the stop loss execution may be less precise than expected.

If you chose last price when setting the stop loss, and the stop loss price is close to the liquidation price, the risk is high that the mark price will touch the liquidation line before the last price does. This is not platform "wick manipulation". It is a normal divergence between two prices during extreme market conditions.

Common misunderstandings and risks

"The K-line did not reach it, so the platform manipulated the market." In most cases, you will see the answer after switching to the mark price. The exchange's mark price algorithm is public, based on a weighted index of multiple spot exchanges, and you can check it yourself. If the mark price really did not reach the liquidation line and the position was still closed, then you need to investigate further.

"The liquidation price is a guaranteed fill price." The liquidation price is only a trigger threshold, not a fill guarantee. The actual close is executed as a market order, and slippage may make you lose more.

"Mark price and last price will always stay close." In normal conditions, the two are indeed close. But during low liquidity, cascading large liquidations, or problems with one spot index source, the gap can widen. The funding rate mechanism of perpetual futures pulls the last price toward the spot price over time, but short-term deviations can happen at any moment.

"Adding margin can save the position." If the mark price is already close to the liquidation line, adding margin can widen the distance. But if the market is moving quickly in one direction, the mark price may keep approaching while you are still operating. In extreme conditions, manually adding margin may not be fast enough.

Completion standard for verification

You do not need to agree with the liquidation result, but you need to be able to explain it. The completion standard is this: find the trigger time on the mark price K-line and confirm that the mark price touched the liquidation line; find the trigger price and actual fill price in your records and understand whether slippage occurred; if you had set a stop loss, confirm whether its trigger price type was mark price.

If all three items line up, the liquidation is explainable at the mechanism level. If the mark price K-line shows that the price never touched the liquidation line, or the trigger time in your records does not match the chart, or you find that a stop loss set to mark price was still bypassed, then that is an anomaly that needs to be submitted to the platform for review.

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