Guide · Basics
What Is a Strike Price? Explained Simply
The strike price shows up in options and binary trading constantly, and it's simpler than it sounds: it's just the line a price has to cross for an outcome to change.
A strike price (sometimes called a strike line) is a specific reference price set at the moment a trade is opened. It doesn't move once set — it stays fixed, and the outcome of the trade is determined by comparing the market's actual price at expiry against that fixed line, not against how the price moved along the way.
In binary-style trading specifically, the strike price is the entire basis of the outcome: if you predicted the price would finish above the strike and it does, you win the full payout; if it finishes below, you lose the stake — regardless of whether the price spent the whole window hovering just above the line or spiked far past it. The distance from the strike doesn't add extra profit; only which side of it the price ends up on matters.
This is a common point of confusion for traders coming from spot markets, where profit scales continuously with price movement. A strike-based trade has no 'partial credit' — it's a threshold, not a scale. That's precisely what makes it fast to evaluate (you only need to know one number: where the price is relative to the line) but also unforgiving of a wrong call, however close it was.
Every Fast Binary prediction on Trade2Spike is built around exactly this mechanic — the strike is set the instant you open the position, and the only thing that determines the +85% payout or total loss is where the price lands relative to that line when the timer hits zero.