All articles, A–Z

0DTE options are options traded on their expiry day — zero days to expiration. They are cheap and react violently to small price moves, so gains and losses build very quickly, and most expire worthless.

The 2s10s spread is the 10-year government bond yield minus the 2-year yield. When it turns negative, the yield curve is inverted; in the US, inversions have often preceded recessions, though the timing has varied widely.

Absorption is when large passive orders soak up heavy aggressive buying or selling without the price moving much.

Your account balance is the cash recorded in your account from deposits, withdrawals and closed trades; the available balance is the part you can currently use or withdraw.

Account equity is your balance plus or minus the unrealized result of open positions — what the account would be worth if everything were closed now.

Accumulation describes a period when large buyers are thought to build positions without pushing the price up; distribution is when they are thought to sell into strength.

Active addresses count the unique addresses that sent or received a transaction in a period. It is a rough measure of network use; one person can control many addresses, and one exchange address can serve many people.

An activist investor buys a significant stake in a company to push for changes — in strategy, management, capital returns or the board — that it believes will raise the share price.

Address poisoning sends you a tiny transaction from an address that looks almost identical to one you use, hoping you copy it from your history next time. Dusting sends tiny amounts to many wallets to track or target them. Always check the full address before sending.

Aggressive buyers and sellers cross the spread with market orders and take liquidity; passive orders wait in the book as limit orders and provide it.

An airdrop is a free distribution of tokens to wallet addresses, often to reward early users — and a common disguise for scams asking you to connect your wallet.

Airdrop farming is using protocols in the hope of qualifying for a future token distribution. Points programmes reward activity with points that may or may not convert into tokens later. Sybil farming — using many wallets to claim more — is commonly detected and excluded.

Algorithmic trading uses computer programs to place orders automatically according to predefined rules.

An all-time high (ATH) is the highest price an asset has ever traded at; an all-time low (ATL) is the lowest. A retest of the ATH is a return to that level.

Alpha is the part of a return that beats what the market or a benchmark delivered for the same risk. Positive alpha suggests skill or an edge; Jensen's alpha measures it against the return the CAPM would predict from the portfolio's beta.

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.

Altcoin season is informal slang for a period when many altcoins outperform Bitcoin. There is no agreed threshold; some websites publish their own index.

An analyst rating is a research analyst's recommendation on a security, such as buy, hold or sell, often with a price target.

Anchoring is relying too heavily on the first number you saw — such as your entry price or a stock’s old high — when judging what something is worth now.

APR (annual percentage rate) is a yearly rate without compounding; APY (annual percentage yield) includes compounding. A 12% APR compounded monthly equals an APY of about 12.68%. In crypto, advertised rates are often variable and can change or disappear quickly.

Arbitrage is profiting from a price difference for the same asset in two places by buying the cheaper and selling the dearer at the same time.

The Aroon indicator measures how many periods have passed since the latest high (Aroon-Up) and low (Aroon-Down) within a look-back window, usually 25. Readings near 100 mean a fresh extreme; Aroon-Up above Aroon-Down suggests an uptrend.

An asset is anything with economic value that can be owned or traded, such as a share, a currency, gold or a cryptocurrency.

Autocorrelation measures how strongly a series is related to its own past values. The Hurst exponent estimates whether a series tends to persist (above 0.5), revert (below 0.5) or behave randomly (about 0.5). Cointegration means two series that wander individually stay linked over the long run — the statistical basis of many pairs trades.

An automated market maker is a smart contract that prices trades from a formula instead of an order book. In the common constant-product design, a pool holds two tokens whose quantities multiply to a constant (x × y = k), so buying one token makes it progressively more expensive.

Availability bias is judging how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind. A recent, vivid crash makes another crash feel more likely than the evidence suggests.

The average daily range is the average distance between each day’s high and low over a period, such as 14 or 20 days. Unlike the average true range, it ignores gaps between one day’s close and the next day’s open.

The Average Directional Index (ADX) measures the strength of a trend, not its direction; readings above about 25 are commonly read as a strong trend.

The average entry price is the weighted average price of all purchases in a position — buying 10 at $100 and 10 at $90 gives an average of $95.

Average hourly earnings measure the average wage per hour for a group of workers. In the US the figure is released with the monthly jobs report and is watched as a sign of wage-driven inflation.

The Average True Range (ATR) measures how much an asset typically moves per period, including gaps; traders use it to size stops and positions.

Average win and average loss are the mean profit of winning trades and the mean loss of losing trades; combined with win rate they determine expectancy.

Averaging down is buying more of a position that has fallen, which lowers the average entry price but increases exposure to a trade that is already going wrong. Averaging up is buying more as the price rises.

Backtesting is applying a strategy's rules to historical data to see how it would have performed — useful, but easy to fool yourself with if the test is not honest.

Net interest margin (NIM) is a bank’s interest income minus interest expense, relative to its earning assets. CET1 is the ratio of a bank’s highest-quality capital to its risk-weighted assets. The liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) checks that a bank holds enough liquid assets for 30 days of stressed outflows; the net stable funding ratio (NSFR) checks its funding over one year.

The Bank of England (BoE) sets interest rates for the UK through its Monetary Policy Committee; the Bank of Japan (BoJ) sets policy for Japan. Their decisions move the pound and the yen in the same way that the Federal Reserve’s decisions move the dollar.

In a pair such as EUR/USD, the base currency is the first one (EUR) and the quote currency is the second (USD); the price is the amount of quote currency per one unit of base currency.

The basis is the difference between a futures price and the spot price of the same asset; it narrows toward zero as the contract approaches expiry.

Battery arbitrage is charging a battery when electricity is cheap and discharging it when power is more valuable. Profit depends on the price gap and the round-trip efficiency — the share of stored energy that comes back out, often around 85–90% for lithium-ion systems.

A bear market is a sustained period of falling prices, commonly defined for stock indices as a decline of 20% or more from a recent high.

Best execution is a broker’s obligation to seek the most favourable terms reasonably available for a client’s order, considering price, speed, likelihood of execution and costs. The precise rules differ by jurisdiction.

Beta measures how much an asset tends to move relative to a benchmark: a beta of 1.5 has historically meant moving about 1.5 times as much as the market.

The bid-ask spread is the gap between the highest price a buyer is offering (the bid) and the lowest price a seller will accept (the ask).

Bitcoin (BTC) is the first and largest cryptocurrency, launched in 2009, with a supply capped at 21 million coins and secured by proof-of-work mining.

Bitcoin dominance is Bitcoin’s market capitalisation as a share of the whole crypto market. Stablecoin dominance is the same for stablecoins; a rising figure often means money is moving out of riskier coins.

The Bitcoin halving is the scheduled cut in half of the new bitcoin paid to miners per block, every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years. It slows the creation of new coins toward the fixed 21 million cap.

A black swan is a rare, hard-to-predict event with extreme market consequences that people often rationalise only after it has happened.

Block time is the average or target time between new blocks — about 10 minutes on Bitcoin and 12 seconds on Ethereum. Block height is a block’s position in the chain, counting from the first block.

A blockchain is a shared record of transactions grouped into blocks, where each block is cryptographically linked to the last, making past entries very hard to alter.

Bollinger Bands are lines drawn a set number of standard deviations above and below a moving average, widening and narrowing with volatility.

A bond is a loan to a government or company. The issuer usually pays regular interest (the coupon) and repays the face value at maturity. Bond prices move opposite to interest rates: when yields rise, existing bonds lose value.

Book value is a company’s total assets minus its total liabilities, as shown in its accounts. Dividing the share price by book value per share gives the price-to-book ratio.

Bookbuilding is how underwriters collect orders from investors at different prices before an offering, then use that demand to set the final price and decide who gets shares.

A borrowing fee is what a short seller pays to borrow shares, usually quoted as an annual rate and charged daily.

A break of structure (BOS) usually means price moving beyond the last swing high in an uptrend, or below the last swing low in a downtrend, confirming the trend continues.

Break-even is the price at which a trade neither makes nor loses money once all costs are included; moving a stop to break-even means exiting there if the price returns.

Breakeven inflation is the yield on a regular government bond minus the yield on an inflation-protected bond of the same maturity. It is the inflation rate at which both would earn the same, and is used as a market estimate of expected inflation.

A breakout is when the price moves decisively beyond a support or resistance level, or out of a trading range.

Breakout trading means entering when the price moves out of a range or past a key level, expecting the move to continue.

A broker is a regulated firm that gives you access to markets and executes your orders, usually for a commission, a spread or other fees.

A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices, often defined for stock indices as a rise of 20% or more from a recent low.

A bullish candle closes above its open and a bearish candle closes below it; colours vary by platform, so always check the chart's settings.

Common metrics for growth companies: total addressable market (TAM) is the revenue available if a product won its whole market; customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost of winning one customer; monthly and annual recurring revenue (MRR, ARR) measure subscription revenue; gross merchandise value (GMV) is the value of goods sold through a marketplace.

A butterfly spread combines three strikes: buy one lower-strike option, sell two middle-strike options, and buy one higher-strike option, all with the same expiry. It costs little, risks only the premium and pays most if price ends exactly at the middle strike.

Buy and hold is a long-term approach of buying assets and keeping them through market ups and downs, rather than trading frequently.

To buy is to acquire an asset or open a long position; to sell is to dispose of an asset you own or, in short selling, to sell one you have borrowed.

These labels say whether an order opens or closes a position: buy to open and sell to close for long positions, sell to open and buy to close for short positions — common in options trading.

A buy-in is the forced purchase of shares to close a short position or settle a failed delivery, made by a broker or clearing firm, often without the account holder’s consent and at the prevailing market price.

A callable bond lets the issuer repay it early, usually when rates have fallen — bad for the investor, so callable bonds offer higher yields. A putable bond lets the investor sell it back to the issuer early, which protects the investor and usually means a lower yield.

The Calmar ratio divides annualised return by maximum drawdown. A strategy returning 15% a year with a worst drawdown of 30% has a Calmar ratio of 0.5. It rewards returns earned without deep losses.

A candle's body is the thick part between its open and close; its wicks (or shadows) are the thin lines that reach the high and the low.

A candlestick is a chart symbol that shows an asset’s open, high, low and close prices for one period of time.

Capacity utilisation is the share of an economy’s or industry’s productive capacity that is in use. High readings suggest little spare capacity, which can add to inflationary pressure.

Capital expenditure (capex) is spending on long-lasting assets such as equipment and buildings, recorded as an asset and depreciated over time. Operating expenditure (opex) is day-to-day running costs such as wages and rent, deducted in full when incurred.

Capital flight is a rapid, large movement of money out of a country or market, usually because investors fear losses from a crisis, devaluation or political events. It tends to weaken the currency and push up local interest rates.

Capital gains tax is tax on the profit from selling an asset for more than its cost basis; rates, holding-period rules and reporting duties vary by country.

A carbon allowance is a permit to emit a set amount of greenhouse gas — in the EU Emissions Trading System, one tonne of CO₂ equivalent. Total allowances are capped, and companies that emit less can sell spare allowances, which gives carbon a market price.

A carry trade borrows in a low-interest-rate currency and invests in a higher-yielding one, earning the difference unless exchange rates move against it.

A cash position is one paid for entirely with your own funds, without borrowing; it also refers to the part of a portfolio held in cash.

A catalyst is an event or piece of news — such as earnings, a data release or a regulatory decision — that can trigger a large price move.

A central bank manages a country's or region's money supply and sets its key interest rate, mainly to keep inflation under control and support the economy.

A central counterparty (CCP), or clearing house, sits between the two sides of a trade so each side deals with the CCP instead of each other — a step called novation. It collects margin from its members so one default does not spread through the market.

A centralised exchange (CEX) is a company that holds customers’ funds and matches their orders in its own order book. A decentralised exchange (DEX) runs on smart contracts: you trade directly from your own wallet, usually against liquidity pools rather than an order book.

Chaikin Money Flow measures buying and selling pressure by summing money flow volume over a set period, usually 20 or 21 days, and dividing by total volume. It swings above and below zero: positive suggests accumulation, negative suggests distribution.

A change of character (CHOCH) usually describes the first break in the opposite direction to the trend — an early hint that the trend may be ending.

Change-point detection is a set of statistical methods for finding moments when a series’ behaviour — its average, volatility or trend — changes. Traders use it to spot shifts in market regime.

A channel is formed by two parallel lines that contain the price: a trendline plus a parallel line on the opposite side of the swings.

A trading halt is a temporary stop in trading. Circuit breakers trigger halts automatically after large moves: in the US, market-wide halts apply if the S&P 500 falls 7%, 13% or 20% in a day, and limit up–limit down price bands pause individual stocks that move too far too fast.

Circulating supply is the number of tokens currently tradable; total supply includes locked tokens; max supply is the most that can ever exist, if a cap is set.

These on-chain metrics track how long coins have stayed unmoved. Dormant supply is the amount untouched for a set period; Coin Days Destroyed weights each spent coin by how long it had been held; HODL waves chart Bitcoin’s supply by age band. Old coins moving is often read as long-term holders selling.

A coin is the native asset of its own blockchain, such as BTC or ETH; a token is issued by a smart contract on an existing blockchain.

Collateral is money or assets pledged to secure a loan or a leveraged position; the lender can take or sell it if you cannot cover losses.

The Commitments of Traders report, published weekly by the US CFTC, breaks down open interest in futures markets by type of trader, such as commercial hedgers and speculators. It is released on Fridays with data as of the preceding Tuesday.

Commodities are raw materials traded in bulk: energy such as oil and gas, metals such as gold and copper, and farm products such as wheat and coffee. Traders mostly reach them through futures contracts, ETFs or CFDs rather than physical delivery.

The Commodity Channel Index (CCI) measures how far the price is from its recent average relative to its typical deviation; despite the name, it is used on any market.

The compound annual growth rate is the steady yearly rate that would turn a starting value into an ending value: (end ÷ start) raised to 1/years, minus 1. Doubling $10,000 to $20,000 over 5 years is a CAGR of about 14.9%.

Compound interest means earning returns on your earlier returns as well as on the original amount. At 10% a year, $1,000 grows to $1,100 after one year and $1,210 after two, because the second year's interest is also paid on the first year's $100.

Concentrated liquidity lets a liquidity provider place funds only within a chosen price range. It earns more fees per dollar while the price stays in the range, but earns nothing outside it and increases impermanent loss.

Concentration risk is the danger of having too much money in one asset, or in assets that tend to fall together, such as several tech stocks.

Concept drift is when the relationship a model learned changes over time, so a model that worked in the past stops working. In markets it can follow changes in regulation, participants or market regimes.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favour information that supports a trade you already hold and dismiss information that contradicts it.

Confluence is when several independent reasons point to the same price level or trade idea, such as support, a moving average and a Fibonacci level together.

Consumer confidence surveys ask households how they feel about the economy, their finances and their spending plans. Examples are the Conference Board index and the University of Michigan sentiment survey in the US.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the price of a typical basket of consumer goods and services; its change over time is the most-watched measure of inflation.

Contango is when futures prices are above the spot price, typically rising with later expiries; backwardation is when futures trade below spot.

A continuation is a pause in a trend after which the price resumes in the same direction; patterns such as flags are called continuation patterns.

A contract for difference is an agreement with a broker to exchange the change in an asset's price, so you can trade it without owning it.

In power markets, a contract for difference is a long-term arrangement that pays a generator the difference between a market reference price and an agreed strike price when the market is lower, and usually requires it to pay back when the market is higher. It is different from the leveraged trading CFDs offered by brokers.

Contrarian trading means deliberately going against the prevailing crowd sentiment, buying when others are fearful and selling when they are euphoric.

Convenience yield is the benefit of physically holding a commodity — for example, being able to keep a factory running during a shortage. A high convenience yield helps explain why near-term futures can trade above later ones (backwardation).

Convexity describes how a bond’s duration changes as yields change. Because of convexity, an ordinary bond’s price rises more when yields fall than it drops when yields rise by the same amount.

Correlation measures how closely two prices move together, from +1 (always together) to −1 (always opposite); highly correlated positions add up to one bigger bet.

Cost basis is the original value of an investment for tax purposes — usually the price paid plus costs — used to calculate the taxable gain or loss when it is sold.

Cost of carry is the net cost of holding an asset until a future date: financing, storage and insurance, minus any income such as dividends or interest. In theory, a futures price equals the spot price plus the cost of carry.

Counterparty risk is the danger that the other side of a deal — a broker, exchange or trading partner — fails to meet its obligations, for example by becoming insolvent.

The coupon rate is the annual interest a bond pays as a percentage of its face value. A $1,000 bond with a 4% coupon pays $40 a year, whatever its market price.

A covered call means owning shares (usually 100 per contract) and selling a call option on them. The premium gives extra income, but if the price rises above the strike, the shares can be called away and the upside is capped.

A crack spread is the difference between the price of refined products, such as gasoline and diesel, and the crude oil used to make them. It approximates a refiner’s margin; a common version is the 3-2-1 spread (three barrels of crude into two of gasoline and one of distillate).

A credit default swap is a contract in which one party pays a regular premium and the other agrees to compensate it if a named borrower suffers a credit event such as default. The annual premium, the CDS spread, is a market gauge of that borrower’s credit risk.

A credit spread is the extra yield a bond pays over a comparable government bond. It compensates investors for default risk and lower liquidity; widening spreads signal rising worry about borrowers.

With isolated margin, only the collateral assigned to a position can be lost if it is liquidated; with cross margin, all available funds in the account support every open position.

A cross rate is the exchange rate between two currencies, derived from each one's rate against a third currency — usually the US dollar. If EUR/USD is 1.10 and USD/JPY is 150, then EUR/JPY is about 1.10 × 150 = 165.

A bridge moves assets between blockchains, usually by locking them on one chain and issuing a representation on another — bridges have been a frequent target of hacks.

WTI (West Texas Intermediate) and Brent are the two main crude oil benchmarks. WTI is a US crude priced for delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma; Brent is based on North Sea crude and is used to price much of the world’s oil. Their price difference is called the Brent–WTI spread.

A crypto wallet is software or hardware that holds the keys controlling your crypto; the wallet address is the public identifier others send funds to.

A cryptocurrency is a digital asset recorded on a blockchain and transferred directly between users, without a bank keeping the record.

A cup and handle is a rounded, U-shaped recovery followed by a small downward drift (the handle), often read as a pause before a breakout higher.

A currency appreciates when it buys more of another currency than before, and depreciates when it buys less. If EUR/USD rises from 1.08 to 1.10, the euro has appreciated against the dollar and the dollar has depreciated against the euro.

The current account records a country’s trade in goods and services plus income and transfers with the rest of the world. A persistent deficit must be financed by capital inflows, which can leave the currency vulnerable if those inflows stop.

Current yield is a bond’s annual coupon divided by its current price. A bond paying $40 a year and trading at $950 has a current yield of about 4.2%. It ignores any gain or loss at maturity.

With a custodial wallet, such as an exchange account, a company holds your keys; with self-custody you hold them yourself — more control, and full responsibility.

A loss limit is a pre-set amount of loss after which you stop trading — for the rest of the day or week. It caps the damage from bad days and from emotional decisions after losses. Many prop-firm and funded accounts enforce them.

A dark pool is a private trading venue that does not show orders before they trade. Institutions use dark pools to buy or sell large blocks without revealing their intentions; trades are reported after execution.

Data snooping is testing so many ideas on the same data that some look profitable purely by chance. The more variations you try, the more likely the best one is luck rather than a real edge.

Day trading means opening and closing positions within the same trading day, so that no positions are held overnight.

The debt-to-equity ratio compares a company’s debt with its shareholders’ equity. A ratio of 1.5 means $1.50 of debt for every $1 of equity. What counts as high depends heavily on the industry.

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is lending, trading and other financial services run by smart contracts on public blockchains instead of by banks or brokers.

Decision fatigue is the decline in decision quality after making many decisions. Analysis paralysis is overthinking until you cannot act at all. Rules, checklists and fewer trades reduce both.

Default risk is the chance that a borrower fails to make interest or principal payments on time. Credit ratings and credit spreads are the most common ways markets express it.

Delivery versus payment is a settlement method where securities are delivered only if payment is made at the same time, so neither side can be left with nothing. Payment versus payment (PvP) applies the same principle to the two legs of a currency trade.

A deposit moves money into your trading account and a withdrawal moves it out; transfers between accounts or platforms may take time and carry fees.

A derivative is a contract whose value comes from the price of something else — a share, index, currency, commodity or cryptocurrency — such as futures and options.

A DEX aggregator searches many pools and exchanges and splits a swap across them to get a better overall price. A router contract is the smart contract that carries out the swap through the chosen path of pools.

Diluted earnings per share divides profit by the number of shares there would be if options, warrants and convertible securities were turned into shares. It is lower than or equal to basic EPS.

In a direct listing, a company’s existing shares start trading on an exchange without a traditional underwritten offering. The opening price is set by the exchange’s opening auction rather than by banks.

Directional trading means profiting from correctly predicting whether a price will rise or fall, as opposed to strategies that profit from spreads or volatility.

Discounted cash flow values a company or project as the sum of its expected future cash flows, each discounted back to today at a rate that reflects risk. The result depends heavily on the growth and discount-rate assumptions, so small changes move it a lot.

Distressed debt is the bonds or loans of companies in, or close to, financial trouble or bankruptcy. It trades at deep discounts, and specialist investors buy it hoping for recovery or influence in a restructuring.

Divergence is when the price and an indicator disagree — for example a higher high in price but a lower high in RSI — suggesting the move is losing strength.

Diversification is spreading money across assets that do not all move together, so that a loss in one holding has a smaller effect on the whole portfolio.

A dividend is a payment a company makes to its shareholders, usually in cash, out of its profits or reserves.

Dividend yield is the annual dividend per share divided by the share price. A stock paying $2 a year and trading at $50 yields 4%. A very high yield can be a warning that the market expects the dividend to be cut.

A doji is a candle whose open and close are almost equal, leaving a very small body; it shows that neither buyers nor sellers won the period.

Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is investing a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, which spreads purchases over time.

Donchian Channels plot the highest high and lowest low over a set number of periods, usually 20, with a midline between them. A close above the upper band signals a breakout; the Turtle traders famously used them for trend-following entries.

A double top is two similar peaks with a dip between them that can signal a turn lower; a double bottom is the mirror image that can signal a turn higher.

Dow Theory is a classic framework for reading market trends, built from Charles Dow's work. It says the market moves in primary, secondary and minor trends, that prices reflect all known information, and that a trend is confirmed when the industrial and transport averages agree.

Drawdown is how far an account or investment has fallen from its previous peak, usually expressed as a percentage.

Drawdown duration — or time under water — is how long an account stays below its previous peak before making a new high. A strategy can have a modest maximum drawdown but a very long recovery.

A dual-class structure has two or more share classes with different voting rights, often letting founders keep control with a minority of the economic ownership.

Durable goods orders measure new orders for products meant to last three years or more, such as machinery, vehicles and aircraft. The figure is volatile, so analysts often watch the version excluding transportation.

Duration measures how sensitive a bond’s price is to interest rates. Modified duration gives the approximate percentage price change for a one-percentage-point change in yield: a bond with a duration of 7 loses about 7% if yields rise by 1 point.

DV01 is the money gained or lost on a bond position if yields move by one basis point (0.01%). CS01 is the same idea for a one-basis-point change in the credit spread. Traders use them to size and hedge interest-rate and credit risk.

DYOR means “do your own research” — a reminder not to rely on someone else's tip, and sometimes a disclaimer attached to one.

Earnings are a company's profit for a period; listed companies publish them in regular earnings reports that can move the share price sharply.

Earnings per share is a company's profit available to ordinary shareholders divided by its number of shares outstanding.

Earnings season is the few weeks after each quarter ends when most listed companies publish their results.

An earnings surprise is the difference between a company’s reported earnings and the analysts’ consensus estimate. Share prices often react more to the surprise, and to updated guidance, than to the earnings themselves.

EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation — a rough measure of operating profit before financing and accounting charges. Dividing enterprise value by EBITDA gives the EV/EBITDA multiple. It ignores capital spending, so it can flatter capital-heavy businesses.

An economic calendar lists the dates and times of upcoming data releases and central-bank decisions, so traders know when volatility may spike.

An economic indicator is a regularly published statistic, such as inflation, employment or GDP, that shows how an economy is performing and can move markets on release.

Elliott Wave theory, developed by Ralph Nelson Elliott in the 1930s, holds that markets move in repeating patterns: five waves in the direction of the trend, then three corrective waves against it. Wave counts are subjective, and two analysts often disagree.

An emission schedule is the planned rate at which new tokens are created, for example as mining or staking rewards. Bitcoin’s issuance halves roughly every four years; other tokens set their own rules.

An engulfing pattern is a two-candle pattern where the second candle's body completely covers the first candle's body in the opposite direction — bullish after a fall, bearish after a rise.

Enterprise value is a company’s market capitalisation plus its debt minus its cash. It estimates what it would cost to buy the whole business, and allows comparisons between companies with different amounts of debt.

Ethereum is a blockchain that runs smart contracts — programs that power tokens, DeFi applications and more; its native currency is ether (ETH).

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is the computing environment that runs smart contracts on Ethereum. Many other blockchains are “EVM-compatible”, so the same contracts and wallets work on them.

The European Central Bank (ECB) sets monetary policy for the countries that use the euro.

To receive a dividend you must own the shares before the ex-dividend date; buying on or after it means the seller gets the payment. The record date is when the company checks its list of shareholders, and the payment date is when the cash arrives.

An exchange is an organised marketplace with set rules where buyers' and sellers' orders are matched, such as a stock exchange or a crypto exchange.

On-chain data providers estimate how much crypto moves into exchanges (inflows), out of them (outflows) and their difference (netflow), as well as the total held on exchanges (reserves). Large inflows are often read as potential selling, but the estimates depend on how addresses are labelled.

An exchange rate is the price of one currency in another; trading assets priced in a foreign currency adds currency conversion costs and exchange-rate risk.

An exchange-traded fund is a fund whose shares trade on an exchange like a stock. Most ETFs track an index, sector or commodity, giving broad exposure in a single trade.

Execution is the moment an order is actually filled — when a matching buyer or seller is found and the trade takes place at a specific price.

Exercise is when an option holder uses the right to buy (call) or sell (put) the underlying at the strike price. Assignment is the other side: the option seller is chosen to fulfil that obligation and must sell or buy the shares at the strike.

Expectancy is the average amount a strategy makes or loses per trade: (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss).

The expiration date is the last day an option or futures contract exists; after it, the contract is exercised, settled or becomes worthless.

Exposure is how much of your money is affected by a change in a price: a $10,000 position has $10,000 of exposure even if you used only $1,000 of margin.

Exposure at default is the amount a lender expects to be owed at the moment a borrower defaults, including undrawn credit lines that may be used before then. Expected loss is often estimated as probability of default × loss given default × exposure at default.

Fading a move means trading against it in the expectation that it will stall or reverse — selling into a sharp rally or buying a sharp drop. “Sell the rip” is the counterpart of “buy the dip”: selling after a bounce in a weak market.

A fail to deliver happens when a seller does not deliver securities by the settlement date. US rules require brokers to close out persistent fails, and the SEC publishes fails data.

A fair value gap (FVG) is usually defined as a three-candle sequence where the middle candle moves so fast that the wicks of the first and third candles do not overlap.

A fallen angel is a bond downgraded from investment grade (BBB− or above) to high yield. A rising star is the opposite: a high-yield bond upgraded to investment grade. Both can see forced buying or selling by funds with rating limits.

Fear and greed are the two emotions most often blamed for trading mistakes: fear makes people exit too early or freeze, greed makes them over-size or hold too long.

FOMO is the urge to jump into a trade because a price is moving fast and others seem to be profiting, often without a plan.

The dot plot is a chart in the Federal Reserve’s quarterly Summary of Economic Projections showing where each FOMC participant expects the policy rate to be at the end of coming years. It shows officials’ views, not a commitment.

Fed funds futures are exchange-traded contracts whose price reflects the expected average federal funds rate in a given month. Traders use them to infer the market-implied probability of future Federal Reserve rate changes.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the Federal Reserve body that votes on US interest rates at scheduled meetings throughout the year.

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States; its interest-rate decisions affect markets around the world.

Fibonacci tools draw levels at ratios such as 38.2%, 50% and 61.8% of a previous move (retracements) or beyond it (extensions), which traders watch as possible turning points.

Finality is the point after which a transaction cannot realistically be reversed. Before that, a chain reorganisation (reorg) can replace recent blocks with a different version of history. Exchanges wait for several confirmations before crediting deposits for this reason.

A financial instrument is a tradable contract or product with monetary value, such as a share, a bond, a futures contract or an option.

Flags and pennants are short pauses after a sharp move — a small sloping rectangle (flag) or a small symmetrical triangle (pennant) — often treated as continuation patterns.

A flash loan is an uncollateralised DeFi loan that must be borrowed and repaid within the same blockchain transaction; if it is not repaid, the whole transaction is reversed. Flash loans are used for arbitrage, and also in attacks that borrow huge sums to manipulate a vulnerable protocol.

Float rotation is a day’s trading volume divided by the number of shares available to trade (the float). A stock that trades more than its whole float in a day has rotated it, which usually signals extreme speculative activity.

A footprint chart shows, inside each candle, how much volume traded at each price and on which side — buyers or sellers.

The forex market is the global market for exchanging currencies, and the largest financial market by trading volume. It has no central exchange, trades around the clock from Monday to Friday, and quotes currencies in pairs such as EUR/USD.

Trailing P/E divides the share price by earnings over the past twelve months; forward P/E uses analysts’ estimates for the next twelve months. Forward P/E depends on forecasts that may prove wrong.

Forward points are the amount added to or subtracted from the spot exchange rate to get the forward rate. They mainly reflect the interest-rate difference between the two currencies over the contract’s life.

Forward testing is running a strategy on new, live market data — with paper money or small size — to check that backtest results hold up.

Free cash flow is the cash a company generates from operations after paying for capital expenditure. It is the money available for dividends, buybacks, debt repayment or acquisitions. Definitions vary slightly between analysts.

Free margin is the part of your equity not tied up as margin for open positions, and therefore available for new trades or to absorb losses.

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt — negative news or rumours, sometimes spread deliberately, that push people to sell.

Fully diluted valuation (FDV) is a token's price multiplied by its maximum supply — what it would be worth if every possible token were in circulation.

Fundamental analysis estimates what an asset is worth from underlying data — company results, the economy, interest rates — rather than from price charts alone.

The funding rate is a periodic payment exchanged between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract to keep its price close to spot.

A futures contract is a standardised, exchange-traded agreement to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date.

The gambler’s fallacy is believing that a random outcome is “due” after a streak — for example, that five losing trades in a row make a win more likely. The hot-hand fallacy is the opposite mistake: believing a winning streak will continue without evidence.

Gap risk is the danger that the price jumps past your stop level — for example overnight or after news — so the order fills at a much worse price than planned.

A GARCH model is a statistical model of volatility that changes over time, in which today’s volatility depends on recent shocks and recent volatility. It captures volatility clustering and is widely used in risk models.

A gas fee is the transaction fee paid to a blockchain network, such as Ethereum, to have a transaction processed; it rises when the network is busy.

In a private fund, the general partner (GP) manages the money and makes decisions, while limited partners (LPs) supply most of the capital with liability limited to what they invest. Multiple on invested capital (MOIC) is total value returned divided by money invested: $25 million back on $10 million is 2.5×.

Safe-haven assets are ones investors buy when markets are in turmoil because they expect them to hold their value — classically gold, US Treasuries, the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen. They often, but not always, rise when stocks fall.

A good loss follows the plan and stays within the planned risk — sometimes it is simply an unlucky trade. A bad win makes money while breaking the rules — a lucky trade. Rewarding bad wins teaches habits that eventually cost money.

Governance tokens give holders votes on a protocol’s decisions, such as fee changes or treasury spending, usually through formal proposals. Voting power is typically proportional to tokens held, so large holders can dominate.

Granger causality is a test of whether past values of one series help forecast another. Despite the name it shows predictive usefulness, not true cause and effect.

Trader shorthand for a day that ended with a net profit (green), a net loss (red) or roughly break-even (flat). Likewise, a green or red trade is a winning or losing trade.

Green and social bonds raise money for specified environmental or social projects. Sustainability-linked bonds work differently: the money can be used for anything, but the coupon changes if the issuer misses agreed sustainability targets. Labels follow voluntary guidelines, so the details vary.

Greenium is the possible price premium — and so lower yield — of a green bond compared with an otherwise similar conventional bond from the same issuer. Studies disagree on how large it is, and it is often small or absent.

A greenshoe, or over-allotment option, lets the underwriters of an offering sell up to 15% more shares than planned. It helps them support the price in the first weeks of trading.

Grid trading places buy and sell orders at fixed intervals above and below a price, profiting from back-and-forth movement but suffering in strong trends.

Gross profit or loss is the result from the price difference alone; net profit or loss is what remains after commissions, fees, interest, financing and other costs.

Gross return is the result before costs; net return is what remains after fees, spreads, financing and slippage — the only figure that ends up in your account.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total value of goods and services an economy produces in a period; its growth rate is the broadest measure of economic health.

Guidance is a company's own forecast of future results, such as expected revenue; changes to guidance often move the stock more than past results.

A hammer is a candle with a small body near the top and a long lower wick, appearing after a decline: sellers pushed the price down but buyers drove it back up.

A hanging man looks like a hammer — small body, long lower wick — but appears after a rise, where it can warn that buying pressure is weakening.

A fork is a change to a blockchain’s rules. A hard fork is not backward-compatible, so nodes that do not upgrade can split into a separate chain; a soft fork tightens the rules in a way old nodes still accept.

Head and shoulders is a reversal pattern of three peaks with the middle one highest; the inverse version, with three troughs, can mark the end of a downtrend.

Degree days measure how much heating or cooling demand the weather creates. A heating degree day counts how far the daily average temperature falls below a base (65°F in the US, often around 18°C elsewhere); a cooling degree day how far it rises above it. They drive natural gas and power forecasts and weather derivatives.

A hedge fund is a private investment fund for wealthy and institutional investors that can use leverage, short selling and other flexible strategies. It faces fewer rules than mutual funds and usually charges a management fee plus a share of profits.

Hedging is opening a position that is expected to gain when another of your positions loses, reducing your overall risk.

Heikin-Ashi is a chart type whose candles are calculated from averages of current and previous prices to smooth out noise; its prices are not actual traded prices.

High-frequency trading (HFT) is algorithmic trading at extremely high speed, holding positions for fractions of a second, usually by specialised firms.

A high-water mark is the peak value an account or fund has ever reached. Performance fees are usually charged only on gains above that peak, so investors don't pay twice for winning back the same losses.

An uptrend makes higher highs (HH) and higher lows (HL); a downtrend makes lower highs (LH) and lower lows (LL). These four labels describe trend structure.

Hindsight bias is the feeling, after the fact, that an outcome was obvious all along. It makes traders overestimate how predictable markets are and blame themselves unfairly for missed moves.

HODL is crypto slang for holding an asset through volatility instead of selling; it began as a typo of “hold” and was later read as “hold on for dear life”.

A hot wallet is connected to the internet and convenient for frequent use; a cold wallet keeps keys offline, such as a hardware device, and is safer for long-term storage.

Housing starts count new residential construction projects begun in a month. Because housing is sensitive to interest rates, the figure is an early sign of how monetary policy is affecting the economy.

An iceberg order is a large order that shows only a small part in the order book at a time, hiding its true size; such hidden liquidity can absorb big moves.

The Ichimoku Cloud is a Japanese indicator system of five lines; the shaded cloud between two of them is used to judge trend, momentum and support or resistance.

Impermanent loss is how much worse off a liquidity provider is compared with simply holding the two tokens, caused by the pool rebalancing as their relative price changes. In a 50/50 constant-product pool, a 2× price change in one token means roughly 5.7% less value than holding. It becomes permanent when you withdraw.

Implementation shortfall is the difference between the price when you decided to trade and the result you actually achieved, including spreads, market impact, fees and any part of the order that was never filled.

Implied volatility (IV) is the future volatility that the market is pricing into an option; higher IV means more expensive options.

An index fund is a mutual fund or ETF that tries to match the return of a market index, such as the S&P 500, by holding the same securities. It trades less and usually charges far lower fees than actively managed funds.

Inflation is the general rise in prices over time, which reduces what money can buy; it shapes interest rates and moves almost every market.

Tracking error is the volatility of the difference between a portfolio’s returns and its benchmark’s. The information ratio divides the average excess return by the tracking error, showing how consistently a manager beats the benchmark.

An initial public offering is when a company first sells shares to the public and lists on a stock exchange. Underwriting banks help set the price, which is why first-day trading can open far above or below the offer price.

An inside bar's whole range sits within the previous candle's range, showing contraction; an outside bar's range covers the previous candle entirely, showing expansion.

Insider ownership is the share of a company held by its executives and directors; institutional ownership is the share held by funds, pension plans and other institutions. In the US, large holders and insiders must report positions and trades in public filings.

An institutional trader trades on behalf of an organisation such as a bank, pension fund, hedge fund or insurance company, usually in large size.

An interest rate is the price of borrowing money; central banks set short-term policy rates, which ripple through bonds, currencies and stocks.

The internal rate of return is the discount rate at which the present value of an investment’s cash flows equals zero. It is a single annual return figure for investments with irregular cash flows, such as private funds or projects.

Internalisation is when a broker or dealer fills a customer’s order from its own inventory or against another customer, instead of sending it to an exchange.

An option's premium has two parts: intrinsic value, what it would be worth if exercised now, and time value, the extra paid for the chance of a better move before expiry.

The invalidation level is the price or condition at which your trade idea is clearly wrong. It is the natural place for a stop-loss.

The inventory-to-use ratio (or stocks-to-use) compares the stock of a commodity with how much is expected to be used over a period. Low ratios mean thin buffers, which tends to make prices higher and more volatile.

An inverted hammer has a small body near the bottom and a long upper wick, appearing after a decline as a possible early sign that buyers are testing higher prices.

An iron condor sells an out-of-the-money put spread and an out-of-the-money call spread on the same expiry. It earns the premium if price stays between the short strikes, and the bought options cap the maximum loss.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is the industry body for over-the-counter derivatives. Its standard ISDA Master Agreement sets the legal terms — including what happens on default — for most swaps between institutions.

Jobless claims count people filing for unemployment benefits. In the US, initial claims are published weekly, which makes them one of the most timely signs of whether the labour market is weakening.

Journal tags are labels added to each trade — the setup used, the mistake made, your emotional state, the market condition — so that results can later be filtered and compared. Annotations are notes drawn or written on the chart itself.

The Kelly criterion is a formula for the fraction of capital to risk that maximises long-run growth, given a known win probability and payoff. For a bet with win probability p and payoff b to 1, the fraction is p − (1 − p) ÷ b. Because real edges are uncertain, many traders use a fraction of it (“fractional Kelly”).

Keltner Channels are volatility bands drawn above and below an exponential moving average, usually a 20-period EMA plus and minus two times the Average True Range. The EMA shows direction and the ATR sets the width.

Know Your Customer (KYC) rules require brokers and exchanges to verify who their customers are; anti-money laundering (AML) rules require them to watch for and report suspicious activity. They are why platforms ask for ID and proof of address.

A layer 1 is a base blockchain such as Bitcoin or Ethereum; a layer 2 is a network built on top of one to make transactions faster and cheaper.

Lagging indicators, such as moving averages, confirm moves after they start; leading indicators, such as some oscillators, try to anticipate them but give more false signals.

LEAPS are long-dated options with expirations up to about three years away. A LEAPS call gives exposure to a stock's rise for less capital than buying the shares, while the long time frame gives the trade more time to work.

A legal entity identifier is a 20-character code that uniquely identifies a company or other legal entity in financial transactions. In some jurisdictions, such as the EU, firms need one before they can trade securities.

Leverage means controlling a position larger than your own money — through borrowing or a contract that needs only a deposit — so that gains and losses are both multiplied.

A leveraged buyout is the purchase of a company funded largely with borrowed money, with the company’s own cash flows used to repay the debt. In a management buyout, the company’s existing managers are among the buyers.

A limit order buys or sells only at a price you specify or better, so you control the price — but the order may never be filled.

A line chart connects one price per period — usually the close — into a single line, which makes the overall direction easy to see.

On a linear price scale equal distances mean equal amounts of money; on a logarithmic scale equal distances mean equal percentage changes, which suits long histories.

Liquidation is the forced closing of a leveraged position by a broker or exchange when your collateral no longer covers the required margin.

Liquidity describes how easily an asset can be bought or sold quickly, in size, without moving its price much.

A liquidity sweep is a quick move beyond an obvious high or low, where many stop orders sit, followed by a sharp reversal; some traders call it a stop hunt.

A locational marginal price is the cost of delivering one more megawatt-hour of electricity to a specific point on the grid. It combines the energy price with the cost of transmission congestion and losses, so prices differ by location.

A market is locked when the best bid equals the best ask, and crossed when the bid is higher than the ask. Both are usually brief, caused by quotes on different venues or delays in data.

A long position means you own an asset — or a contract that behaves like owning it — because you expect its price to rise.

A long squeeze is a sharp fall that forces over-leveraged buyers to sell or be liquidated, and their forced selling pushes the price down even further.

Look-ahead bias is using information in a backtest that was not available at the time — for example, trading at a day’s close using a signal calculated from that same close, or using revised economic data. It makes results look better than reality.

Loss aversion is the tendency to feel losses more strongly than equal gains, which leads traders to hold losing positions too long and close winners too early.

Loss chasing is raising risk to win back losses quickly — larger positions, lower-quality setups or extra trades. It is closely related to revenge trading and often turns a bad day into a disastrous one.

Loss given default is the share of an exposure that is lost if a borrower defaults. It is one minus the recovery rate: if lenders recover 40 cents on the dollar, the loss given default is 60%.

Lot size is the standard trading unit of an instrument — for example 100,000 units of currency in a standard forex lot.

MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) tracks the gap between two exponential moving averages to show changes in a trend's momentum.

Exchanges often charge a lower maker fee to orders that add liquidity by resting in the order book, and a higher taker fee to orders that remove liquidity by executing immediately.

Margin is the money you put up as collateral so that a broker lends you funds, or an exchange lets you hold a position larger than your cash.

A margin call is a demand from your broker to add money or reduce positions because your account equity has fallen below the required margin.

Margin level is a ratio of your equity to the margin in use, typically equity ÷ used margin × 100%; platforms close positions when it falls below a set level.

A market is any place or system where buyers and sellers meet to exchange an asset at a price they both accept.

Market capitalisation is the total market value of a company's shares: the share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding.

Market hours are the times when a market is open for trading; many stock exchanges trade only on weekdays, while crypto markets trade around the clock.

Market impact is the price movement caused by your own order. A large market order uses up the best prices and moves the market against you; the bigger the order relative to available liquidity, the larger the impact.

A market maker is a firm that continuously quotes both a buying and a selling price, earning the spread and making it easier for others to trade.

A market order buys or sells immediately at the best price currently available, without setting a price limit.

A market participant is anyone who trades or provides services in a market, from an individual trader to banks, funds, brokers and market makers.

The market price is the price at which an asset can be bought or sold right now — in practice, the best available bid or ask.

Market Profile organises price by time: each time period (often 30 minutes) is shown as a letter, called a time-price opportunity (TPO), at every price traded in that period. The result shows where the market spent the most time — the value area and point of control.

Market structure is the pattern of swing highs and swing lows that shows whether a market is trending up, trending down or ranging.

A marubozu is a candle with little or no wick, meaning it opened at one extreme and closed at the other — one side controlled the whole period.

A maturity wall is a large amount of debt coming due around the same period. If interest rates are higher than when the debt was issued, refinancing it can be expensive or difficult for weaker borrowers.

Maximal extractable value is the profit that can be made by choosing which transactions go into a block and in what order. Examples include arbitrage, liquidations and sandwich attacks, in which a trader’s swap is placed between the attacker’s buy and sell.

Maximum adverse excursion (MAE) is the largest open loss a trade showed before it closed; maximum favourable excursion (MFE) is the largest open profit. Comparing them across many trades helps judge whether stops are too tight or targets too close.

Mean reversion is the idea that prices that stretch far from their average tend to return toward it, and strategies that trade on that assumption.

The mempool is the waiting area of transactions that have been broadcast but not yet included in a block. Transactions offering higher fees are usually picked first.

Mental accounting is treating money differently depending on where it came from — for example, taking bigger risks with “house money” from recent profits. Every dollar in the account is worth the same.

Merger arbitrage is buying a takeover target after a deal is announced, when it trades a little below the offer price, to earn that spread if the deal closes. The main risk is the deal failing, which can send the price sharply lower.

Indicators based on Bitcoin miners. The Puell Multiple divides daily miner revenue by its 365-day average; hash ribbons compare short and long moving averages of hash rate to flag miner capitulation; miner reserves and outflows estimate how much miners hold and sell.

Mining is how proof-of-work blockchains add new blocks: computers compete to solve a puzzle and earn a reward. Hash rate measures the total computing power doing this.

A missed trade is a valid setup under your plan that you did not take. Recording missed trades shows whether hesitation is costing you, but chasing them after the fact is a common mistake.

Momentum is the speed and persistence of a price move; strong momentum means the price is moving quickly in one direction with little pullback.

Momentum trading means buying assets that are rising strongly — or shorting those falling strongly — expecting the move to persist for a while.

The Money Flow Index is a 0–100 oscillator that combines price and volume to measure buying and selling pressure, often called a volume-weighted RSI. Readings above 80 are overbought and below 20 oversold; the default period is 14.

Morning and evening stars are three-candle reversal patterns: a large candle, a small indecisive one, then a large candle in the opposite direction.

Mortgage-backed securities pool home loans and pass the borrowers’ payments to investors. Asset-backed securities do the same with other loans, such as car loans, credit cards or student loans. Early repayment by borrowers is a key risk.

A moving average is the average price over a fixed number of recent periods, recalculated each period to smooth out short-term noise.

A mutual fund pools money from many investors and invests it in a portfolio of stocks, bonds or other assets run by a professional manager. Shares are bought from and sold back to the fund at its net asset value, calculated once a day.

On-chain valuation ratios: MVRV divides market cap by realised cap; NVT divides network value by on-chain transaction volume; SOPR compares the value of coins when spent with their value when last moved (above 1 means sold at a profit); NUPL estimates holders’ total unrealised profit or loss. Readings are interpretive, not signals on their own.

Narrative bias is preferring a convincing story over the quality of the evidence. A compelling explanation for why a stock must rise can make it easy to ignore data that says otherwise.

The NBBO is the highest bid and lowest offer for a US stock across all exchanges at a moment in time. Under US rules, brokers generally must not execute customer orders at prices worse than the NBBO.

A negative electricity price means generators pay to deliver power. It happens when supply from inflexible or subsidised sources, such as wind and solar on a sunny, windy day, exceeds demand and shutting down is more costly than paying buyers.

Net asset value is the value of a fund’s holdings minus its liabilities, usually expressed per share. An ETF can trade slightly above (a premium) or below (a discount) its NAV.

Net income is what remains of revenue after all expenses, interest and taxes — the company's profit, or “bottom line”.

Your net position is what remains after offsetting longs against shorts in the same asset — long 10 and short 4 is a net long position of 6.

News trading and event-driven trading aim to profit from price reactions to scheduled or unexpected events such as data releases or earnings.

No-trade conditions are rules that tell you not to trade — such as major news in the next hour, a hit loss limit, poor sleep or a market that does not fit your strategy. A no-trade day is a day you sit out deliberately.

A non-deliverable forward is a currency forward settled in cash: instead of exchanging the full amounts, the parties pay the difference between the agreed rate and the market rate at maturity. NDFs are common for currencies with capital controls.

On account-based blockchains such as Ethereum, a nonce is a counter that orders the transactions sent from an address, so each is processed once and in sequence. In Bitcoin mining, a nonce is the number miners change while searching for a valid block.

Nonfarm payrolls (NFP) is the monthly US figure for jobs added or lost outside farming, published in the employment report and often a major market mover.

An OHLC bar chart draws each period as a vertical line from low to high, with a tick on the left for the open and on the right for the close.

An omnibus wallet holds many customers’ assets together in one address or account, with the custodian keeping track of who owns what. It is efficient, but customers rely entirely on the custodian’s records.

On-balance volume (OBV) adds a period's volume when the price closes up and subtracts it when it closes down, creating a running total of volume pressure.

On-chain activity is recorded publicly on a blockchain; off-chain activity, such as trades inside an exchange's own books, is not.

A one-cancels-the-other (OCO) order links two orders so that when one executes, the other is cancelled. The classic use is a stop-loss and a take-profit on the same position.

OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a group of oil producers that coordinates output policy. Since 2016 it has also worked with other producers, including Russia, as OPEC+. Its production decisions can move oil prices sharply.

An open position is a trade you still hold, whose result changes with the price; a closed position has been exited, so its profit or loss is final.

Open interest (OI) is the total number of futures or options contracts that are open and not yet closed or settled; rising OI means new money entering positions.

OHLC are the four prices recorded for each period on a chart: the first traded price (open), the highest (high), the lowest (low) and the last (close).

Many stock exchanges open and close the trading day with an auction: orders are collected and matched at a single price that maximises the volume traded. Market-on-open (MOO) and market-on-close (MOC) orders are designed to execute in these auctions. Closing prices from the auction are used to value funds and indices.

Operating cash flow is the cash generated by a company’s core business in a period, shown in the cash flow statement. When it is persistently below reported profit, analysts look closely at the quality of those earnings.

Optimal trade entry (OTE) usually refers to entering during a pullback into roughly the 62–79% Fibonacci retracement zone of the previous move.

Rollups process transactions off the main chain and post them back in batches. Optimistic rollups assume batches are valid unless someone submits a fraud proof during a challenge period; ZK (zero-knowledge) rollups attach a cryptographic validity proof to every batch. A sequencer orders the transactions in both.

The Greeks measure how an option's price reacts to changes: delta (underlying price), gamma (change in delta), theta (time), vega (volatility) and rho (interest rates).

The option premium is the price the buyer pays the seller for an option; it is the most an option buyer can lose.

Option pricing models estimate an option’s fair value. Black-Scholes (1973) gives a closed-form price assuming constant volatility; binomial models use a tree of up and down moves and handle early exercise; Monte Carlo methods simulate many price paths; the Heston model lets volatility itself change randomly.

An option gives its buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy (a call) or sell (a put) an asset at a set price until or on a set date.

An options chain is the table of every listed call and put for an underlying asset, grouped by expiry date and strike price. Each row shows prices such as bid, ask and last, plus volume, open interest and often implied volatility and the Greeks.

An order is an instruction to a broker or exchange to buy or sell a specific quantity of an asset under conditions you set, such as price or timing.

An order block is usually described as the last opposite-direction candle before a strong move, treated as a zone where large orders may have been placed.

An order book is the live list of buy and sell limit orders waiting at each price on an exchange.

Order book imbalance compares the volume of resting buy orders with resting sell orders near the current price, as a hint of short-term pressure.

Order flow is the stream of buy and sell orders reaching a market; order-flow traders study who is trading aggressively and where large orders sit.

The output gap is the difference between what an economy actually produces and an estimate of what it could produce at full, sustainable capacity. A positive gap points to inflation pressure; a negative one to slack. It cannot be measured directly, so estimates differ.

Overbought and oversold describe prices that have risen or fallen unusually far, unusually fast — often judged with oscillators such as RSI. Neither guarantees a reversal.

Overconfidence is believing your knowledge or skill is greater than it is. In trading it shows up as oversized positions, excessive trading and ignoring risk after a run of wins.

Overfitting is tuning a strategy so closely to past data that it captures noise rather than a real pattern, so it fails on new data.

An overnight fee is the financing cost a broker charges for holding certain leveraged positions, such as CFDs or forex, past the daily cut-off time.

Overtrading is trading too often or too large, usually out of boredom or emotion, which raises costs and the number of mistakes.

Pairs trading means going long one asset and short a closely related one, betting on the gap between them rather than on the market's direction.

Paper trading is practising with simulated money, often in a broker's demo account, before risking real money in live trading.

Parabolic SAR plots dots above or below the price that move closer as a trend continues and flip sides when it reverses, often used for trailing stops.

A partial fill happens when only part of your order is executed, usually because there was not enough volume available at your price.

Payment for order flow is when a broker is paid by a market maker for sending it customers’ orders. It helps fund commission-free trading but raises conflict-of-interest questions; US brokers must disclose it in routing reports, and some jurisdictions restrict or prohibit it.

The payout ratio is the share of a company’s earnings paid out as dividends. Paying $1.50 a share from earnings of $3.00 is a 50% payout ratio. Ratios close to or above 100% are hard to sustain.

The PEG ratio is the P/E ratio divided by the expected annual earnings growth rate in percent. A P/E of 30 with 20% expected growth gives a PEG of 1.5. It depends heavily on the growth estimate.

Penny stocks are shares of very small companies that trade at low prices, often on over-the-counter markets. They are cheap per share but thinly traded, poorly researched and a frequent target for manipulation, so they carry very high risk.

Perpetual futures are futures contracts with no expiry date, kept close to the spot price by regular funding payments between longs and shorts.

A pip is the standard unit of price movement in a currency pair — 0.0001 for most pairs and 0.01 for pairs quoted in Japanese yen.

Pip value is how much money a one-pip move is worth for a given position. For a pair quoted in US dollars, one pip on a 100,000-unit position is worth $10; for other pairs it depends on the exchange rate and your account currency.

Pivot points are support and resistance levels calculated from the previous period's high, low and close, widely used by intraday traders.

A point of interest (POI) is a price zone a trader has marked in advance — such as an order block or gap — where they plan to look for a trade.

A portfolio is the full collection of assets and positions you hold, viewed together for risk and performance.

Portfolio allocation is how your money is divided between assets or strategies, such as 60% shares and 40% bonds.

Portfolio heat is the total amount you would lose if every open position hit its stop at once, usually as a percentage of the account. Five trades each risking 1% give 5% heat. Traders cap it to avoid large combined losses.

A position is the amount of an asset or contracts you currently hold or owe, together with its direction — long or short.

Position sizing is deciding how many shares, contracts or coins to trade so that, if your stop is hit, you lose only an amount you chose in advance.

Position trading means holding trades for weeks to months or longer, aiming to capture large trends rather than daily swings.

A post-only order is a limit order that is cancelled instead of executed if it would trade immediately, so it only ever adds liquidity (and usually pays maker fees). A reduce-only order can only shrink an existing position, never increase or reverse it — useful for stops and targets on derivatives exchanges.

A power purchase agreement is a long-term contract to buy electricity, often from a specific wind or solar project, at an agreed price or formula. It gives the generator predictable revenue and the buyer a known cost.

A megawatt (MW) measures power — the rate of producing or using energy — and a megawatt-hour (MWh) measures energy: 1 MW for one hour. 1 gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 MW, and 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) is 1,000,000 MWh. Wholesale power is usually priced per MWh.

Pre-commitment is deciding your rules — entries, stops, size, loss limits — before emotions are involved. A cooling-off period is a planned break after a big loss or stressful event before you trade again.

A pre-trade checklist lists the conditions a trade must meet before you enter — setup, trend, risk, news. A post-trade checklist reviews what happened afterwards: whether you followed the plan, what went well and what to change.

Pre-trade risk checks automatically block orders that break limits on size, price or exposure before they reach the market. A kill switch cancels all open orders and stops an automated system at once. Both are standard protections for algorithmic trading.

Preferred stock is a class of shares that usually pays a fixed dividend and ranks ahead of common stock for dividends and in bankruptcy, but behind bonds. Holders usually have no voting rights, and the price moves less than common stock.

Price action is the study of raw price movement — candles, swings, levels and trends — to make trading decisions with few or no indicators.

A price gap is a jump between one candle's close and the next candle's open, leaving an empty space on the chart where no trades took place.

Price improvement is an execution at a better price than the best quote at the time the order arrived — for example, buying at $50.01 when the best ask was $50.02.

The price-to-book ratio is the share price divided by book value per share. It is most useful for asset-heavy businesses such as banks; for companies whose value lies in brands or software it says little.

The price-to-earnings ratio divides a share's price by its earnings per share, showing how much investors pay for each unit of profit.

The price-to-sales ratio is a company’s market capitalisation divided by its annual revenue. It is used for companies without profits, but ignores costs, so two companies with the same ratio can have very different margins.

Judging a trade by its process rather than its result: a good trade follows the plan with controlled risk, whatever the outcome. Process goals (follow the checklist, respect the stop) are under your control; outcome goals (make $1,000 this week) are not.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) measures changes in the prices producers receive for their output, and is sometimes an early signal of consumer inflation.

Profit and loss (P&L) is how much a trade or account has gained or lost, after costs, measured in money or as a percentage.

Profit factor is gross profit divided by gross loss; above 1 means the strategy made more on winners than it lost on losers.

Proof of reserves is an attempt by an exchange or custodian to show it holds the customer assets it claims, often using on-chain addresses and cryptographic proofs. Without proof of liabilities — what is owed to customers — it shows only half the picture.

Proof of work secures a blockchain through computing power (mining); proof of stake secures it through participants locking up the network's own coins.

A private key is the secret that proves ownership and authorises transactions; the public key, from which the address is derived, can be shared safely.

A pullback is a temporary move against the prevailing trend, such as a dip during an uptrend; its depth measured in percent is often called a retracement.

Pullback trading means entering in the direction of a trend after a temporary move against it, aiming for a better price than chasing.

A pump and dump is a fraud where promoters buy a cheap, thinly traded asset, hype it with false or misleading claims to push the price up, then sell their holdings to the buyers they attracted. The price usually collapses afterwards.

A purchasing managers’ index is a monthly survey of companies about orders, output, employment and prices. Readings above 50 indicate expansion compared with the previous month, below 50 contraction. Well-known versions include the ISM Manufacturing and Services PMIs in the US and S&P Global’s PMIs.

Purchasing power parity is the idea that exchange rates should, over the long run, move towards the rate that makes the same basket of goods cost the same in both countries. Currencies can stay far from PPP for years, so it is a valuation guide, not a timing tool.

The put-call ratio divides the volume (or open interest) of puts by that of calls. A high ratio shows heavy demand for protection; traders often read extremes as contrarian sentiment signals.

Pyramiding is adding to a winning position as it moves in your favour, usually in smaller amounts each time and with the stop raised so the total risk stays controlled.

Quantitative easing (QE) is a central bank buying large amounts of bonds to push down longer-term interest rates and ease financial conditions. Quantitative tightening (QT) is the reverse: shrinking those holdings, usually by not reinvesting maturing bonds.

Queue position is your place in line among limit orders at the same price; orders placed earlier are usually filled first.

An R-multiple expresses a trade's result in units of its initial risk: if you risked $100 and made $250, the trade returned 2.5R.

A range is a period when the price moves sideways between a fairly stable high and low instead of trending; traders also call it consolidation.

Range trading means buying near the bottom and selling near the top of a sideways range, until the price breaks out of it.

A rate hike is a central bank raising its key interest rate, usually to fight inflation; a rate cut lowers it, usually to support a slowing economy.

A re-entry is opening a new position in the same idea after a previous one was closed — for example after being stopped out, if the setup forms again.

The real effective exchange rate is a currency’s average value against its trading partners, weighted by trade and adjusted for differences in inflation. It shows whether a country’s goods are becoming more or less competitive abroad.

Net operating income (NOI) is a property’s rental income minus operating costs, before financing. Funds from operations (FFO) adds depreciation back to a REIT’s net income and removes gains on property sales; adjusted FFO (AFFO) also deducts recurring capital spending. The debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) is NOI divided by loan payments.

A real yield is a bond yield after inflation. It can be calculated from expected inflation, or observed directly in inflation-protected bonds such as TIPS. Rising real yields tend to weigh on gold and long-duration growth stocks.

Realised capitalisation values each coin at the price it last moved on-chain, instead of today’s price; realised price is that total divided by the supply. It approximates the average cost basis of holders.

Unrealized P&L is the paper gain or loss on a position you still hold; it becomes realized P&L when you close the position and the result is locked in.

Rebalancing is buying and selling to bring a portfolio back to its target allocation after price moves have shifted the weights.

Recall risk is the chance that the lender of shares you have shorted asks for them back. If your broker cannot find replacement shares, your short position may be closed, sometimes at a bad moment.

Recency bias is giving too much weight to the most recent events, such as assuming a strategy is broken after three losses in a row.

A recession is a significant, widespread decline in economic activity lasting more than a few months; two quarters of falling GDP is a common rule of thumb, not an official definition everywhere.

Two common smart-contract exploits. A reentrancy attack calls back into a contract before its first execution has finished, for example to withdraw funds twice. Oracle manipulation feeds a protocol a false price — often by briefly moving a thin market — so it lends or liquidates on wrong data.

Regular trading hours are an exchange’s main session — for US stocks, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Sessions before and after are extended hours, with thinner liquidity and wider spreads.

A REIT is a company that owns or finances income-producing property and trades like a stock. US REITs must distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders, so they are often held for income. They are usually valued with funds from operations (FFO) rather than earnings.

The Relative Strength Index is an oscillator from 0 to 100 that compares recent gains with recent losses to gauge the momentum of a move.

Restaking reuses already staked assets to help secure additional protocols in return for extra rewards. It adds layers of risk, because the same stake can be slashed under several sets of rules. Liquid restaking tokens represent such positions.

A retail trader is an individual who trades with their own money through a broker or exchange, rather than on behalf of an institution.

A retest is when the price returns to a level it has just broken — for example falling back to old resistance — before deciding whether to continue.

Return on equity (ROE) is net income divided by shareholders’ equity; return on assets (ROA) is net income divided by total assets. ROE can be pushed up by borrowing, so it is best read alongside debt levels.

Return on invested capital measures after-tax operating profit relative to the capital invested in the business by both shareholders and lenders. A company whose ROIC is above its cost of capital is creating value.

Revenge trading is taking impulsive, often larger trades straight after a loss in an attempt to win the money back quickly.

Revenue is the total income a company earns from selling goods or services before any costs are deducted — the “top line”.

A reversal is a change in the direction of a trend — an uptrend turning into a downtrend or the reverse — as opposed to a brief pullback.

A rights issue lets existing shareholders buy new shares, usually at a discount, in proportion to what they already own. Taking up the rights avoids dilution; shareholders who do not can often sell the rights instead.

In trading, risk is the possibility of losing money — and, more precisely, how much you could lose and how likely that outcome is.

A risk budget is the amount of risk allocated to a portfolio, strategy or position. Risk contribution is how much of the portfolio’s total risk comes from each holding — which can differ greatly from its share of the money, because volatile, correlated holdings contribute more.

Risk management is the set of rules that limits how much you can lose — through position size, stop losses, leverage limits and diversification — so that no single mistake ends your trading.

Risk of ruin is the probability that losses shrink an account to a point where you can no longer trade your plan; it rises quickly with larger risk per trade.

The efficient frontier is the set of portfolios offering the highest expected return for each level of risk, under a model’s assumptions. A minimum variance portfolio aims for the lowest possible volatility; risk parity allocates so each asset contributes equally to risk rather than equally in money.

Risk per trade is the amount you accept losing if a trade hits its stop, often set as a small fixed percentage of the account such as 1%.

Risk stacking is holding several positions that all depend on the same underlying risk — for example, long three technology stocks and a Nasdaq index future. They will tend to lose together, so the real risk is larger than each position suggests.

The risk-free rate is the return on an investment treated as having no default risk, usually proxied by short-term government bills such as US Treasury bills. It is the baseline every riskier investment must beat and a key input in CAPM, the Sharpe ratio and valuation.

Risk-on describes periods when investors favour riskier assets such as stocks and crypto; risk-off describes moves toward safer assets such as government bonds.

The risk-to-reward ratio compares how much you could lose on a trade, down to your stop, with how much you aim to gain, up to your target.

A rug pull is a scam in which a project's creators suddenly withdraw funds or liquidity and disappear, leaving the token close to worthless.

Rule adherence is how closely you follow your written trading plan; a rule violation is any trade or action that breaks it. Tracking adherence separately from profit shows whether results come from the method or from luck.

Sample size is how many trades a result is based on; small samples produce misleading statistics, and statistical significance asks whether a result could be luck.

Scaling in is building a position in several planned stages; scaling out is closing it in stages, for example taking partial profit at a first target and leaving a “runner” for a bigger move.

Scalping is a very short-term style that aims to take many small profits from tiny price moves, often holding for seconds or minutes.

Under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, scope 1 emissions come directly from sources a company owns or controls, scope 2 from the electricity, heat or steam it buys, and scope 3 from everything else in its value chain, such as suppliers and the use of its products.

A scratch trade is one closed at or near break-even, usually because the idea stopped looking right. After costs it is often a small loss.

Seasonality is a tendency for prices to behave in a certain way at certain times of year, such as harvest effects in agricultural commodities.

A seed phrase is a list of 12 or 24 words that can restore a wallet and all its keys — anyone who sees it can take the funds, so it must never be shared.

Self-trade prevention is an exchange feature that stops a trader’s buy and sell orders from executing against each other, which would create artificial volume.

Settlement is how a contract is completed: cash settlement pays the price difference in money, while physical delivery transfers the actual asset.

The settlement period is the time between a trade and the final exchange of cash and assets; in the US most stock trades settle one business day after the trade (T+1).

Many traders grade setups by how well they match their criteria: an A setup meets every condition, a B setup most, a C setup only some. Grading helps decide position size, or whether to trade at all.

Dilution is the fall in existing shareholders’ percentage ownership when a company issues new shares — for capital raising, employee stock awards or conversions. Unless the new money creates enough value, earnings per share fall too.

The Sharpe ratio measures return per unit of risk: excess return over a risk-free rate divided by the volatility of returns.

A shooting star is a candle with a small body near the bottom and a long upper wick after a rise, showing that buyers pushed higher but sellers forced the price back down.

Short interest is the number of a company’s shares that have been sold short and not yet bought back. It is often shown as a percentage of the float. Days to cover divides short interest by average daily volume to estimate how long short sellers would need to close.

Before a short sale, US brokers generally must have reasonable grounds to believe the shares can be borrowed — a “locate”. Borrow availability is how many shares lenders have available, and hard-to-borrow stocks have few, which makes borrowing expensive.

A short rebate is interest paid back on the cash collateral from a short sale. For easy-to-borrow stocks it can be positive for large institutions; for hard-to-borrow stocks the borrow fee can make it negative. Retail brokers often pay no rebate.

Short selling means selling something you have borrowed, hoping to buy it back later for less and keep the difference.

A short squeeze is a rapid price rise that forces short sellers to buy back their positions, which pushes the price up even further.

Slippage is the difference between the price you expected when placing an order and the price at which it was actually filled.

Slippage tolerance is the maximum percentage difference from the quoted price you accept for a swap; if the price moves further before execution, the transaction fails. A setting that is too high leaves you exposed to sandwich attacks.

A smart contract is a program stored on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met; bugs in the code are a real risk to funds held in it.

Smart order routing is software that decides where to send an order — or how to split it across venues — to get the best available price and fill, taking into account quotes, fees and depth.

SOFR, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, is a benchmark for the cost of borrowing US dollars overnight against Treasury collateral. It is published daily by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and replaced USD LIBOR in most contracts.

A soft landing is when a central bank slows the economy enough to bring inflation down without causing a recession. A hard landing is when the slowdown turns into a sharp downturn or recession.

The Sortino ratio is like the Sharpe ratio but counts only downside volatility, so large gains are not penalised as risk.

A special purpose acquisition company is a listed shell company that raises money to buy a private business, usually within a deadline of around two years. Completing that merger — the “de-SPAC” — takes the private business public.

The spark spread is the power price minus the cost of the gas burned to make that power; the dark spread does the same for coal. “Clean” versions also deduct the cost of carbon allowances. Together they approximate a power plant's gross margin.

A special purpose vehicle is a separate legal entity created for one narrow purpose, such as holding assets for a securitisation or a single investment, so that its risks are kept apart from the parent company.

A spin-off is when a company separates one of its businesses into a new, independently listed company and gives its shares to existing shareholders.

Spoofing is placing orders you intend to cancel to trick others about supply or demand; layering does this with several orders at different prices. Wash trading is trading with yourself or a related party to create fake volume. All three are forms of market manipulation and are illegal in regulated markets.

Spot trading is buying or selling the asset itself for immediate delivery at the current price, rather than trading a derivative contract on it.

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, typically by holding reserves.

Stagflation is weak or falling economic growth combined with high inflation and often rising unemployment. It is hard for central banks, because fighting inflation with higher rates also weakens growth.

Staking is locking crypto to help secure a proof-of-stake network in return for rewards; liquid staking issues a tradable token that represents the staked amount.

The stochastic oscillator shows where the latest close sits within the recent high–low range, on a scale from 0 to 100.

A stock, or share, is a unit of ownership in a company. Shareholders own a slice of the business, can profit when its value rises and may receive dividends, and common shares usually come with voting rights.

A stock market index tracks the combined price of a group of shares, such as the S&P 500 (about 500 large US companies), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (30 companies) or the Nasdaq Composite. You cannot buy an index itself, only funds, futures or CFDs that follow it.

A stock split increases the number of shares and lowers the price per share in the same proportion: after a 2-for-1 split, 100 shares at $80 become 200 shares at $40. A reverse split does the opposite. Neither changes the total value of your holding by itself.

A stop loss is an exit you set in advance — usually an order — that closes a losing trade automatically once the price reaches a level you chose.

A stop order stays inactive until the price reaches a trigger level and then becomes a market order — used to limit losses or to enter when price breaks a level.

A stop-limit order becomes a limit order once a trigger price is reached, giving control over the price but no guarantee of a fill.

A long straddle buys a call and a put with the same strike and expiry; a strangle uses an out-of-the-money call and put, which costs less. Both profit from a big move in either direction and lose if price stays still. Selling them is the opposite bet.

Stranded asset risk is the chance that an asset, such as a coal plant or oil reserves, loses value or must be written off earlier than expected because of new regulation, falling demand or cheaper technology.

Stress testing checks how a portfolio would fare under severe, hypothetical shocks, such as a 2008-style crash. Scenario analysis compares results under several possible futures; sensitivity analysis changes one input at a time to see which assumptions matter most.

The strike price is the fixed price at which an option holder can buy (call) or sell (put) the underlying asset.

A sudden stop is an abrupt halt in foreign capital flowing into an economy. Countries that depend on those inflows to fund a current-account deficit may be forced into a sharp adjustment, often with a falling currency and a recession.

The sunk cost fallacy is continuing with a losing idea because of what you have already put in, rather than judging it on what happens next.

Supply and demand zones are price areas, drawn as bands rather than lines, where price previously turned sharply because of heavy selling (supply) or buying (demand).

Support is a price area where falling prices have tended to stop; resistance is an area where rising prices have tended to stall.

Survivorship bias is drawing conclusions only from what survived — successful traders or companies still listed — while ignoring the failures that disappeared.

A swing high is a peak with lower highs on both sides; a swing low is a trough with higher lows on both sides. Together they map a market's structure.

Swing trading aims to capture price moves that last from a few days to a few weeks.

A take profit is a pre-set exit — usually a limit order — that closes a winning trade automatically once the price reaches your target.

A takeover premium is how much more an acquirer offers than the target’s market price before the deal. Offering $65 for a stock trading at $50 is a 30% premium.

Tax-loss harvesting means selling investments that are below their purchase price to realise a capital loss, then using that loss to reduce the tax on capital gains. In the US, leftover losses can offset up to $3,000 of ordinary income a year and carry forward.

Technical analysis is the study of past prices and volume, usually on charts, to judge market behaviour and plan trades — as opposed to analysing a business or economy.

A technical indicator is a calculation based on price, volume or both, plotted on or beneath a chart, that summarises some aspect of market behaviour.

A tender offer is a public offer to buy shares directly from shareholders at a stated price, usually above the market price, for a limited time. It can come from an acquirer or from the company buying back its own stock.

Terms of trade compare a country’s export prices with its import prices. When export prices rise faster — for example, oil prices for an oil exporter — the terms of trade improve, which often supports the currency.

Three white soldiers are three consecutive strong bullish candles, each closing higher; three black crows are the bearish mirror image.

Tick size is the smallest price increment an instrument can move in, such as $0.01 for many US shares or 0.25 points for some index futures.

Real volume counts the units actually traded; tick volume counts price changes and is used as a proxy where real volume is unavailable, as in spot forex.

A ticker is the short code used to identify a tradable asset, such as AAPL for Apple shares or BTC for bitcoin.

Tilt is an emotional state, usually after losses, in which you stop following your rules and start taking impulsive, oversized trades.

Time and sales is the live list of every executed trade with its price, size and time; reading it to gauge buying and selling pressure is called tape reading.

Time-in-force tells the venue how long an order stays active. Immediate-or-cancel (IOC) fills what it can at once and cancels the rest; fill-or-kill (FOK) must fill completely at once or not at all; good-till-cancelled (GTC) stays open until filled or cancelled, although many brokers limit how long.

Time-weighted return removes the effect of deposits and withdrawals, so it measures the strategy itself. Money-weighted return — the internal rate of return of your cash flows — includes their timing, so it measures your actual experience.

The timeframe is the period of time each bar or candle on a chart represents, such as one minute, one hour or one day.

HTF, MTF and LTF mean higher, middle and lower timeframe — for example a daily chart for direction, a 4-hour chart for structure and a 15-minute chart for entries.

A token burn permanently removes tokens from circulation by sending them to an address no one can spend from. Some protocols burn part of their fees, which offsets new issuance.

Tokenomics is the economic design of a crypto token: its supply, how new tokens are issued, who holds them and when locked tokens are released.

Tom-next (“tomorrow to next day”) is a short currency swap that rolls a spot position forward by one business day. Forex brokers use it, or something similar, to work out the daily financing charge or credit on positions held overnight.

Total value locked is the market value of the crypto assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or blockchain. It is a rough gauge of usage, but it rises and falls with token prices and can double-count assets used in several protocols.

TOTAL2 and TOTAL3 are chart symbols for the total crypto market capitalisation excluding Bitcoin (TOTAL2) and excluding both Bitcoin and Ethereum (TOTAL3). Traders use them to follow the altcoin market as a whole.

A trade is a single purchase or sale of an asset; traders also use the word for the whole round trip of opening and later closing a position.

The trade balance is the value of a country’s exports minus its imports over a period. Exporting more than it imports is a trade surplus; the opposite is a trade deficit.

A trade bust is the cancellation of an executed trade by the exchange, usually because the price was clearly erroneous under the venue’s rules.

Trade efficiency compares the profit you actually captured with the maximum favourable move during the trade (MFE capture). Taking $3 of a $5 move is 60% efficiency. Consistently low numbers suggest exits are too early or too late.

Trade frequency is how often you trade. Higher frequency multiplies costs and decisions, so it only makes sense if each trade has an edge after those costs.

Trade management is everything you decide after entering: moving or trailing the stop, taking partial profits, adding to the position or closing early. Rules decided in advance work better than decisions made in the moment.

A trade review is a structured look back at closed trades to check whether you followed your plan and what to change, judged on process rather than outcome alone.

A setup is the set of market conditions your strategy looks for, such as a pullback to support in an uptrend. The entry trigger is the specific event that tells you to act on it, such as a candle closing back above the level.

A trade thesis is the reason you expect a trade to work, written down before you enter it, together with what would prove it wrong.

Trading is buying and selling financial assets with the aim of profiting from changes in their price, usually over shorter periods than long-term investing.

An API (application programming interface) lets software place orders and receive data from a broker or exchange. FIX is the long-standing industry protocol for electronic trading messages; WebSocket feeds stream live prices over a persistent connection. APIs usually have rate limits on how many requests you can send.

Trading capital is the money set aside for trading — ideally money whose loss would not affect your essential finances.

A trading chart is a picture of an asset's price history, with time running from left to right and price from bottom to top.

Discipline is following your trading plan consistently — waiting patiently for valid setups and respecting your exits — even when emotions push the other way.

A trading edge is a repeatable advantage that produces a positive expectancy over many trades, after costs. It can come from a pattern, information, speed or execution, and it must be shown with enough data to rule out luck.

Trading fees are what you pay to trade — commissions charged per order, the spread, and in some products financing or exchange fees — and they reduce every result.

A trading journal is a record of every trade you take — the setup, the reasons, the result and what you felt — kept so you can learn from patterns in your own behaviour.

A trading pair shows two assets quoted against each other, such as EUR/USD or BTC/USDT: the price tells you how much of the second asset buys one unit of the first.

A trading plan is a written set of rules that decides in advance what you trade, when you enter and exit, and how much you are willing to risk.

Trading psychology covers the emotions, biases and habits that affect your decisions — often the difference between a good plan and good results.

A trading routine is a repeatable daily process — preparing before the market opens, trading the plan and reviewing afterwards — that reduces impulsive decisions.

A trading session is a block of the day when a particular market is most active, such as the Asian, London and New York sessions in currency markets.

A trading signal is a condition that a strategy treats as a reason to buy or sell; a false signal is one that triggers but is not followed by the expected move.

A trading statement lists your account's transactions, positions, fees and balances for a period, and is the main record for checking results and for taxes.

A trading strategy is a defined method for deciding when to buy or sell, based on specific conditions that can be written down and tested.

A trading system is a complete, usually rule-based set of strategies, risk rules, tools and procedures, often precise enough to be automated.

A trailing stop is a stop order that follows the price at a set distance as the trade moves in your favour, but never moves back.

US Treasury securities are debt issued by the US government. Bills mature in a year or less and are sold at a discount; notes mature in 2 to 10 years and bonds in 20 or 30 years, both paying interest every six months.

TIPS are US Treasury bonds whose principal rises and falls with the consumer price index. The fixed coupon is paid on the adjusted principal, so the interest payments also rise with inflation.

A trend is the general direction of a price over time: up when highs and lows keep rising, down when they keep falling.

Trend following is buying assets that are rising and selling those that are falling, staying in until the trend shows signs of ending.

A trendline is a straight line drawn through at least two swing lows in an uptrend, or two swing highs in a downtrend, to show the trend's slope.

A triangle pattern forms when highs and lows converge toward a point — ascending, descending or symmetrical — showing a narrowing range before a breakout.

The Turtle trading system was a rule-based trend-following method taught by Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt to a group of trainees in 1983. It bought breakouts to new multi-week highs, sized positions by volatility and used strict stops.

Fiat-backed stablecoins hold cash and short-term government debt as reserves; crypto-collateralised stablecoins are backed by more crypto than they issue; algorithmic stablecoins rely mainly on incentives and supply adjustments. A depeg is when a stablecoin trades materially away from its target, such as $1.

The US Dollar Index measures the dollar against a basket of six major currencies — the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona and Swiss franc — with the euro carrying by far the largest weight. A rising index means a stronger dollar.

An unspent transaction output (UTXO) is a piece of cryptocurrency received in an earlier transaction and not yet spent. Bitcoin tracks balances as collections of UTXOs, unlike Ethereum, which keeps account balances.

In proof-of-stake networks, validators run the software that proposes and checks blocks, and delegators assign their tokens to a validator without running one. Validators usually keep a commission from the rewards, and can be slashed — lose part of the stake — for breaking network rules.

Value at risk estimates a loss threshold for a given period and confidence level: a one-day 95% VaR of $10,000 means losses should exceed $10,000 on only about 5% of days, if the model is right. Conditional VaR (expected shortfall) is the average loss on those worst days.

A vertical spread buys one option and sells another of the same type and expiry at a different strike. It caps both the maximum gain and the maximum loss; a bull call spread, for example, profits from a moderate rise at a lower cost than a plain call.

A vesting schedule sets when locked tokens — typically held by founders, team members and early investors — become available. A cliff is an initial period with no releases, after which tokens unlock gradually. Large upcoming unlocks can add selling pressure.

Volatility measures how much, and how quickly, a price moves up and down over a period of time.

Markets tend to alternate between quiet periods with narrowing price ranges (contraction) and active periods with widening ranges (expansion).

A volatility contraction pattern is a base in which each pullback is smaller than the one before — for example 20%, then 10%, then 5% — often with shrinking volume, before a breakout. The term was popularised by trader Mark Minervini.

Volatility targeting adjusts position size so that a portfolio’s expected volatility stays near a chosen level: exposure is cut when markets become volatile and raised when they calm down.

Volume is the number of shares, contracts or coins traded during a given period.

Volume delta is aggressive buy volume minus aggressive sell volume over a period; cumulative volume delta (CVD) is its running total.

A volume profile is a horizontal histogram showing how much volume traded at each price over a period, highlighting levels where most activity happened.

VWAP is the average price of all trades in a period weighted by their volume, often reset each trading day and used as a fair-value reference.

WAGMI (“we're all gonna make it”) and NGMI (“not gonna make it”) express optimism or doubt; GM (“good morning”) is a community greeting. None carries trading information.

Walk-forward analysis tests a strategy by repeatedly optimising it on one period and then testing it on the following, unseen period, rolling forward through the data. It gives a more honest estimate than a single optimisation over all the data.

The wash sale rule is a US tax rule that blocks deducting a loss on a security if you buy the same or a substantially identical one within 30 days before or after the sale. The loss is not lost forever: it is added to the cost basis of the new shares.

A watchlist is a list of assets you follow closely so you can spot opportunities without scanning the whole market.

A wedge is a pattern where both boundary lines slope in the same direction while converging — a rising wedge or a falling wedge.

The weighted average cost of capital is the average return a company must pay its lenders and shareholders, weighted by how much of each it uses. It is the usual discount rate in a discounted cash flow valuation.

Williams %R is a momentum oscillator that shows where the close sits relative to the highest high of the last 14 periods, on a scale from 0 to −100. Readings from 0 to −20 are overbought and −80 to −100 oversold.

Win rate is the percentage of trades that end in profit; on its own it says little, because a 30% win rate can be profitable and a 90% one can lose money.

A winning trade closes with a profit and a losing trade with a loss; whether a small result counts as a win depends on whether costs are included, so define it consistently.

Working capital is current assets minus current liabilities. The current ratio divides the two; the quick ratio leaves out inventory, which can be hard to sell fast. Both measure whether a company can pay its bills over the next year.

The yield curve plots the yields of bonds from the same issuer, usually a government, from short to long maturities. It normally slopes upward; when short-term yields rise above long-term ones the curve is inverted, which has often come before US recessions.

Yield curve control is a policy in which a central bank targets the yield on bonds of a chosen maturity and buys or sells as much as needed to hold it there. The Bank of Japan used it from 2016 to 2024.

Yield to maturity is the annual return you would earn by buying a bond at today’s price and holding it to maturity, assuming every payment is made and coupons are reinvested at the same rate. It is the standard way to compare bonds.

Yield to worst is the lowest yield a bond can deliver if the issuer exercises its right to redeem early on the least favourable date for the investor. For callable bonds it is a more cautious figure than yield to maturity.

YTD means year to date (since 1 January); QoQ compares with the previous quarter; YoY compares with the same period a year earlier.

The Z-spread is the constant spread that, added to the government spot-rate curve, makes a bond’s discounted cash flows equal its price. The option-adjusted spread goes further and uses a model to remove the effect of embedded options such as call rights.

A zero-coupon bond pays no regular interest. It is sold below face value and repaid at full face value at maturity; the difference is the investor’s return. Its price is very sensitive to interest-rate changes.

The ZigZag indicator draws straight lines between significant swing highs and lows, ignoring any move smaller than a set percentage (often 5%). It cleans up noise to show market structure, but it has no predictive power because its last line can change.