You just lowered your leverage, but notice the ADL indicator light hasn't changed at all -- it's still bright, and you start wondering: did cutting leverage not work?
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This issue is far more common than you think. The cause is not your operation mistake, but that in the ADL ranking algorithm, unrealized profit and leverage are multiplied, not added.
Why Your ADL Rank Does Not Drop After Cutting Leverage
The ADL ranking score formula is fixed. For profitable positions, different platforms have slightly different rule descriptions, but the core logic is consistent:
ADL Score = Unrealized Profit and Loss Percentage × Effective Leverage
The key point of this formula is: it uses multiplication, not addition.
Suppose you have a position with 50% profit, and you cut leverage from 10x to 5x:
- Before leverage cut: 50% × 10 = 500 points
- After leverage cut: 50% × 5 = 250 points
The score is indeed cut by half. But if while you are reducing leverage, the position price keeps rising, pushing your unrealized profit up from 50% to 80%, the new score becomes: 80% × 5 = 400 points.
Although this is lower than the initial 500 points, if other traders in the market have even lower scores, you may still stay at the top of the high-risk queue. For profitable positions under the cross margin mode, some platforms use "account maintenance margin rate" to replace the simple leverage multiple, but the core logic remains: the higher your profit, the higher your risk, the more likely you will be selected as the counterparty for auto-deleveraging.
Another Overlooked Factor: Unrealized Profit Itself Pushes Up Your Ranking
Unrealized profit is the multiplier factor in the ADL ranking formula. Even if you do not adjust leverage at all, as long as the price moves further in your favor, the unrealized profit percentage will rise naturally, and your ranking score will be pushed higher. Rising unrealized profit is a double-edged sword -- the more you earn on a position, the higher you climb in the ADL queue.
Statistics show that in a large-scale ADL event, almost all selected positions are the combination of "high profit × high leverage", instead of positions with only high leverage or only high profit.
The Truly Effective Operation Sequence
If your ADL indicator is lit up for 4 or more grids, follow this sequence for more direct results:
- Take partial profit first, then cut leverage: Lock part of your unrealized profit to real gains, the unrealized profit percentage will drop directly, the numerator of the score shrinks, and your ranking will naturally fall. This is the most direct and effective method.
- If you want to keep the full position, add margin: Adding margin will reduce your effective leverage, thus directly lowering your ADL score.
- Only refer to the indicator light status: The number of lit grids on the ADL indicator represents your real-time ranking position. If the light does not change after you cut leverage, it means even if your score is lower, you are still at the top of the whole market's ranking -- you need to take further actions.
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Verification Method After You Finish Operations
After adjusting leverage or taking partial profit, check the ADL indicator (usually 5 grids total) on your position panel. If it drops from over 4 grids to under 2 grids, that means you have successfully exited the high-risk queue; if the light still shows 4 or more grids, proceed with the second step of operations. Remember one rule: The more unrealized profit you have, the more actively you should take partial profit, don't wait for the system to make decisions for you.
