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Guides and reference · Directional bets, market makers and hedges

Guide 06 of 091 min read

Directional bets, market makers and hedges

Why WhaleRadar labels wallets, and why many stay unclassified.

Not every large position is a bet on direction. Market makers hold inventory, arbitrage desks hold one leg of a trade elsewhere, and hedgers offset exposure they have somewhere else. Counting them as bets would distort the picture.

The labels

  • Directional: positions that behave like a view on price. That includes active traders whose book is mostly on one side at high leverage, however often they trade.
  • Market maker: frequent two-sided trading, low leverage, inventory that flips.
  • Arbitrage: positions that mirror funding or price gaps between venues.
  • Hedger: positions that offset holdings elsewhere.
  • Unclassified: not enough evidence. Many wallets stay here, and we say so.
directionalmarket makerarbitrage or hedgeunclassified
Only the solid dots are bets on direction. The radar shows those by default, the filter adds the rest.

By default the radar shows directional positions only. The filter adds every wallet.