Understand Your Execution
Quotes, impact and slippage, costs, routing, confirmations and exit troubleshooting.
What you will be able to do
Explain a hypothetical fill and its total cost end to end.
Before starting, Basic familiarity with swaps.
- 01
Quotes and their age
10 minRead the full article: Slippage and price impact answer different questionsWhat a quote is, why it goes stale, and what minimum received protects.
Exercise
With a quoted 95 tokens and 5% tolerance, what is the simplified minimum received?
What to look for
90.25 tokens, in a simplified model. Platforms may define tolerance differently.
- 02
Slippage versus price impact
12 minRead the full article: Slippage and price impact answer different questionsTwo different causes that a single setting cannot fix.
Exercise
Your quote shows high price impact. Name three responses, only one of which is raising tolerance.
What to look for
Reduce size, use a different accessible route, or skip the trade. Raising tolerance permits a worse fill rather than improving liquidity.
- 03
Total round-trip cost
14 minRead the full article: Count every cost in a round trip before you need the moveBuild the full cost picture and the break-even move it implies.
Exercise
For $100 with 1% in, 1% out and $2 fixed costs, what gross appreciation is break-even?
What to look for
Approximately 4.04%.
- 04
Confirmation and records
10 minRead the full article: Keep a journal that preserves the original decisionRecord what actually happened: acquired quantity, fills, transaction references and fees.
Exercise
Why is the acquired quantity more useful than the displayed entry price?
What to look for
Quantity and total cost paid are observed facts; a displayed entry price can exclude costs and rounding, and reconstructing it later invites hindsight.
- 05
When a sell fails
12 minRead the full article: Investigate a failed sell before changing settingsDiagnose before resubmitting, and stop treating tolerance as a universal fix.
Exercise
List five distinct causes of a failed sell that look identical in the interface.
What to look for
Insufficient native balance, stale quote, no route, migration in progress, transfer restriction or paused contract, wallet authorisation, or network congestion.