Crypto Futures Basis Tracker (Annualized)🧩 What is Basis Arbitrage
Basis arbitrage is a market-neutral trading strategy that exploits the price difference between a cryptocurrency’s spot and its futures markets.
When futures trade above spot (called contango), traders can buy spot and short futures, locking in a potential yield.
When futures trade below spot (backwardation), the reverse applies — short spot and go long futures.
The yield earned (or cost paid) by holding this position until expiry is called the basis. Expressing it as an annualized percentage allows comparison across different contract maturities.
⚙️ How the Indicator Works
This tool calculates the annualized basis for up to 10 cryptocurrency futures against a chosen spot price.
You select one spot symbol (e.g., BITSTAMP:BTCUSD) and up to 10 futures symbols (e.g., DERIBIT:BTCUSD07X2025, DERIBIT:BTCUSD14X2025, etc.).
The script automatically computes the days-to-expiry (DTE) and the annualized basis for each future.
A table displays for each contract: symbol, expiry date, DTE, last price, and annualized basis (%) — making it easy to compare the forward curve across maturities.
⚠️ Risks and Limitations
While basis arbitrage is often considered low-risk, it’s not risk-free:
Funding and financing costs can erode returns, especially when borrowing or using leverage.
Exchange or counterparty risk — if one leg of the trade fails (e.g., exchange default, margin liquidation), the hedge breaks.
Execution and timing risk — the basis can tighten or invert before both legs are opened.
Liquidity differences — thin futures may have large bid-ask spreads or slippage.
Use this indicator for analysis and monitoring, not as an automated trading signal.
Disclaimer: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions, the strategy may no longer perform as well as in historical backtesting. This post and the script don't provide any financial advice.
Cryptofutures
@tk · spectral█ OVERVIEW
This script is an indicator that helps traders to identify the price difference between spot and futures of the current crypto plotted into the chart. It works in both types of markets, when the chart is plotting the crypto in spot market, it will compare with its respective futures ticker and vice-versa. If the current asset isn't a crypt ticker, the indicator will not be plotted into the chart.
█ MOTIVATION
Since crypto's derivative market is based on spot market asset's price, to calculate the arbitrage mechanisms that attempts to balance the asset price, this indicator can help traders to identify some spot and futures price divergence that can create an anomaly of funding rate and can push it to an extreme negative — or positive — rate. So, easing to track the price difference between both markets will bring more evidences to identify an artificial price move, specially in crypto assets with low market cap.
█ CONCEPT
The trading concept to use this indicator is the concept of the arbitrage machamism created by exchanges that calculates the funding rate based on spot and futures price difference that will vary from exchange to exchange. This strategy don't works alone. It needs to be aligned together with others indicators like Exponential Moving Averages, Chart Patterns, Support and Resistance, and so on... Even more confluences that you have, bigger are your chances to increase the probability for a successful trade. So, don't use this indicator alone. Compose a trading strategy and use it to improve your analysis.
█ CUSTOMIZATION
This indicator allows the trader to customize the following settings:
GENERAL
Text size
Changes the font size of price difference table to improve accessibility.
Type: string
Options: `tiny`, `small`, `normal`, `large`.
Default: `small`
Position
Changes the position of price difference table.
Type: string
Options: `top_left`, `top_center`, `top_right`, `middle_left`, `middle_center`, `middle_right`, `bottom_left`, `bottom_center`, `bottom_right`.
Default: `bottom_right`
Pair Quote
The ticker quote symbol that will be used to base the ticker comparison from spot to futures (e.g. BTCUSDT which `USDT` is the quote. ETHBTC which `BTC` is the quote).
Type: string
Default: USDT
Spectrum Color
The color of the spectrum candles. Spectrum candles are the candles of the opposite market. If the current ticker is in the spot market, the spectrum candles will be the price of the futures market.
Type: color
Default: #434651
█ FUNCTIONS
The indicator contains the following functions:
stripStarts(src, str)
Strips a defined pattern from a string.
Parameters:
src: (string) Source string
str: (string) String pattern to be stripped from start of source string.
Returns: (string) Stripped string with matched regex pattern.
