---
title: "Make your first trade"
description: "Connect a wallet, fund your account, approve two one-time signatures, place an order."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.floatout.trade/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Make your first trade

Five steps. Two of them happen once, ever, and then trading is a single click.

## Before you start

- A wallet. A browser extension like MetaMask or Rabby, a mobile wallet over WalletConnect, or
  an email login if this DEX has one enabled.
- USDC on Arbitrum, if you have not used Hyperliquid before.

1. **Step 1**

### Connect your wallet

   Hit connect and pick your wallet. No account, no email, no password. Your wallet address is your
   account.

   If you have traded on Hyperliquid before with this wallet, your balance, positions and history
   are already here.

2. **Step 2**

### Fund your account

   Open the deposit dialog and send USDC from Arbitrum. It arrives in your Hyperliquid account in
   under a minute and shows up as available margin.

   You are depositing to Hyperliquid, not to this site. Withdrawing later goes back to the same
   wallet you deposited from.

3. **Step 3**

### Enable one-click trading

   Sign the approval for a trading key. This creates a key held by your browser that signs your
   orders, which is why you get a wallet popup for the first trade and not for the ones after it.

   It is scoped and disposable. It never holds funds, it is registered under this site's name, so
   it does not disturb keys you have approved on other Hyperliquid apps, and you can replace or
   remove it whenever you like.

4. **Step 4**

### Approve the trading fee

   Sign the fee approval. This names the maximum builder fee this DEX may charge you per fill.

   One signature, no gas, and it sets a ceiling rather than a payment. The DEX can charge under the
   rate you approved, never over it.

5. **Step 5**

### Place an order

   Pick a market, pick a side, set your size, and submit.

   Start with a small market order to watch the whole path work. It appears in your positions
   immediately, and from here on there are no more wallet popups.

## After the trade

- **Positions** shows what you hold, your entry, your liquidation price and your unrealized
  profit and loss. Watch the liquidation price. It is the number that ends positions.
- **Order history** and **trade history** show what was placed and what filled.
- **Withdraw** sends USDC back to your wallet on Arbitrum. Hyperliquid processes it, and it is
  not something this site can hold up.

## If something looks wrong

Refresh first. This site streams live data over a websocket, and a laptop waking from sleep or
a spotty connection can leave a stale panel behind. A refresh resyncs from the protocol.

If a number still looks wrong after that, check the same wallet on another Hyperliquid app. Your
account lives at the protocol level, so what you see there is the truth, and it tells you
immediately whether the problem is your account or just this window onto it.

Source: https://docs.floatout.trade/start/first-trade/index.mdx