The BitMEX PnL dashboard displays two fee components: Trading Fees (costs for executing trades) and Funding Fees (payments made or received for holding perpetual contract positions). The dashboard charts let you visualise each fee type separately to assess their impact on profitability:
- Trading Fees: Trading fees are the costs incurred for executing trades on the platform. Every time an order is filled, BitMEX charges a fee based on whether the order was a maker or taker order. Maker orders, which add liquidity to the order book, typically carry a lower fee than taker orders, which remove liquidity. The cumulative total of all trading fees for a selected period appears on the dashboard, allowing traders to see how execution costs accumulate over time.
- Funding Fees: Funding fees are periodic payments made or received for holding positions in perpetual contracts. Perpetual contracts on BitMEX use a funding mechanism to keep the contract price anchored to the underlying spot price. Depending on the funding rate and your position direction, funding can be either a cost or a credit to your account. When the funding rate is positive, long position holders pay short position holders, and vice versa.
The dashboard includes charts that allow you to visualise trading fees and funding fees separately. Viewing each fee type in isolation helps identify which cost category has the greater impact on your profitability. For example, a trader who primarily uses limit orders may find that funding fees represent a larger share of total costs than trading fees, whereas a trader who frequently uses market orders may see the opposite pattern.