Updated 2026-07-25
The long/short ratio compares long exposure to short exposure on a venue. It comes in several flavours that are easy to confuse: a ratio of accounts (how many traders lean each way), a ratio of position size (how much notional leans each way), and top-trader variants restricted to the largest accounts. They can disagree sharply, because a small number of large shorts can offset a crowd of small longs.
Every perpetual market is net flat by construction, since each long has a matching short. So the ratio is not a measure of imbalance in the market itself but of how a particular population of traders is positioned on a particular venue. Read it as one input on crowding alongside funding and open interest, and be explicit about which flavour you are quoting. Full guide: long/short ratio explained.