Settlements and payouts

A settlement is the final money-movement event for a set of contracts. Every settlement results in a realised profit or loss and the release of the corresponding position liability back into your available balance.

When Settlements Are Created

Settlements are generated in two situations:

You close a position by trading. If you bought 10 contracts and then sell 5, those 5 contracts are settled against each other at the prices you paid and received. The remaining 5 stay open.
A market expires. When STX resolves a market, all outstanding contracts settle at maxPrice (typically $100) for a win, or $0 for a loss.

Settlement Fields

Field	Description
`id`	Unique settlement ID
`type`	e.g. `closed_long`, `closed_short`, `expired_won`, `expired_lost`
`opening_trade_id`	The trade that opened the position
`closing_trade_id`	The trade (or market result) that closed it
`opening_price`	Price paid when the position was opened (cents)
`closing_price`	Price received when closed, or `maxPrice`/`0` on expiry
`quantity`	Number of contracts settled
`fee`	Exchange fee charged on this settlement
`gross_pnl`	`(closing_price − opening_price) × quantity`
`realized_pnl`	`gross_pnl − fee`
`market_id`	Market the settlement belongs to
`account_id`	Account the settlement belongs to
`inserted_at`	ISO 8601 timestamp

Example Settlement

A user sold 100 contracts at $10 (opening a short) and later bought 100 contracts at $20 (closing the short). The settlement looks like:

{
  "id": "801d773e-fecc-418a-b377-155605595178",
  "type": "closed_short",
  "opening_trade_id": "17aa760d-50c0-4c1a-a5c6-fe4af4adb4bb",
  "closing_trade_id": "7f959093-6a30-4b48-9a59-d1e09f004340",
  "opening_price": 10,
  "closing_price": 20,
  "quantity": 100,
  "fee": 50,
  "gross_pnl": 1000,
  "realized_pnl": 950,
  "market_id": "687e9cdb-a391-4118-aa80-1122bb14779f",
  "account_id": "c1c3614c-32ae-4bea-bae4-fc3f52047790",
  "inserted_at": "2020-11-01T19:02:28.125460Z"
}

Gross P&L: $(20 − 10) × 100 = $1,000. After a $50 fee: $950 net realised P&L.

!!! note For a short position the sign convention is: selling contracts at a low price and buying them back at a higher price is a loss; buying back at a lower price is a profit. For a long position it is the reverse.

Querying Settlement History

Use the mySettlementsHistory query to retrieve past settlements, or tradesForSettlement to get the opening and closing trades for a specific settlement.

Real-Time Settlement Notifications

Subscribe to the active_settlements channel to receive settlement records the instant they are created. This is the most reliable way to keep a running P&L in your integration — polling settlement history will always lag behind the live state of the exchange.