Home › Glossary

Trading glossary, A–Z

Every trading word you'll meet, explained in plain English with a simple example. No jargon to explain the jargon.

1 5 8 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

1

• 10-K filing — A public company's detailed yearly report to the SEC, with audited numbers.
• 13F filing — A quarterly list of what big money managers hold, filed with the SEC.

5

• 52-week high — The highest price of the past year, and why so many traders watch it.

8

• 8-K filing — How a public company reports big news to the SEC, usually within 4 business days.

A

• Absorption — Lots of volume, very little movement: someone big is soaking up the orders.
• Accumulation — The quiet sideways phase where bigger buyers slowly build a position.
• ADX — A 0–100 line that measures trend strength, not direction.
• Airdrop — Free tokens sent to wallets, and how to tell real from fake.
• Algorithmic trading — When a computer places trades by following written rules.
• All-time high — The highest price a market has ever traded at, and why it's unusual ground.
• Alpha — The part of a return that the market's own move doesn't explain.
• Altcoin — Any crypto that isn't bitcoin, and why a low price per coin isn't "cheap".
• Anchoring bias — When one number, like your entry price, quietly steers every choice after it.
• Arbitrage — Buying and selling the same thing in two places to capture a tiny price gap.
• Ask price — The lowest price a seller will take right now: what you pay to buy at once.
• Assignment — When an option seller must buy or sell the shares they promised.
• At the money — An option whose strike sits right at the stock's current price.
• ATR — How far price usually moves per candle — a ruler for your stop.
• Average daily range — How far a market usually travels, high to low, in one day.

B

• Backtesting — Testing your rules on past charts before any real money is at risk.
• Bag holder — Someone stuck holding a big loser, and the 2 rules that keep you from becoming one.
• Bar chart (OHLC) — A chart showing open, high, low and close as a line with two small ticks.
• Base and quote currency — The first and second currency in a pair, and what a buy or sell really means.
• Basis point — One hundredth of a percent: the unit for rates and yields.
• Bear market rally — A sharp bounce inside a longer fall that can look like the bottom.
• Bear trap — A fake drop that catches sellers, and how to read it on a chart.
• Benchmark — The yardstick you compare your results to, usually a market index.
• Beta — How much a stock has tended to swing compared with the whole market.
• Bid and ask — The two live prices behind every trade, and which one you get.
• Bid price — The highest price a buyer will pay right now: what you get to sell at once.
• Bitcoin dominance — Bitcoin's share of the whole crypto market's value, as a percent.
• Bitcoin halving — The four-yearly cut in new bitcoin supply, with every halving so far.
• Black swan — A rare, huge shock almost nobody saw coming, and what it means for your risk.
• Blockchain — A shared record of transactions that many computers keep and check.
• Blue chip stock — Shares in large, long-established companies, and what that does and doesn't mean.
• Bollinger Bands — A moving average with two bands that stretch and shrink with volatility.
• Bond — A loan you make to a government or company, paid back with interest.
• Bond yield — The yearly return on a bond, and why yields and prices move in opposite directions.
• Book value — What a company owns minus what it owes, as shown on its balance sheet.
• Bracket order — Your entry, stop loss and target, sent together as one order.
• Break of structure — When price closes past the last high or low, confirming the trend.
• Breakeven — The point where you neither make nor lose money, after costs.
• Breakout — Price pushes through a level and holds — how to tell it's real.
• Bull and bear market — Rising markets, falling markets, and what the 20% rule of thumb means.
• Bull run — A long stretch of rising prices, and how to read one calmly.
• Bull trap — A fake move up that catches buyers, and the check that filters many traps.
• Buy the dip — Buying after a drop. Why it works in some charts and fails badly in others.
• Buyback — When a company buys back its own shares, so each one left owns a bigger slice.
• Buying power — How much your account lets you buy right now, cash plus any loan.

C

• CAGR — One steady yearly rate that sums up growth over several years.
• Call option — The right to buy a stock at a set price, for a set time.
• Calmar ratio — Yearly return divided by the worst drop, a quick read on return versus pain.
• Candle close — The last price when a candle's time ends, and why it counts more than a wick.
• Candlestick — One bar, four prices: how to read a single candle.
• Capitulation — The panicky final flush when many holders give up at once.
• Carry trade — Holding a higher-rate currency against a lower-rate one to earn the gap.
• Cash account — A brokerage account where you only trade with money you've deposited.
• Catching a falling knife — Buying a fast drop, hoping for the bottom. Why waiting usually beats guessing.
• Central bank — The bank that sets a country's interest rates, and why every market watches it.
• Change of character — The first close against the trend: an early warning sign.
• Chop — Messy sideways price with no clear direction, and why sitting out is a skill.
• Circuit breaker — The rule that pauses the whole US stock market after a big one-day drop.
• Clearing house — The middleman that guarantees exchange trades get settled.
• Closing price — A market's final official price for the day, and why traders watch it.
• Cold storage — Keeping crypto keys offline so hackers can't reach them.
• Commission — The fee your broker charges per trade, and how it eats into small trades.
• Commodity — Raw materials like oil, gold and wheat, and how traders get exposure to them.
• Compound interest — Growth on top of past growth — why time matters so much.
• Compounding losses — Why losses stack up, and why a 50% drop needs a 100% gain to undo.
• Confirmation bias — Seeing what agrees with your idea and missing what doesn't.
• Confluence — When several separate reasons line up at the same price.
• Consolidation — When price moves sideways in a range, pausing before its next move.
• Contango and backwardation — Why later futures can cost more (or less) than the nearby contract.
• Continuation — When a trend pauses, then carries on the same way.
• Contract rollover — Moving a futures trade from the expiring contract to the next one.
• Correction — A drop of 10% to 20% from a recent high — common, and not a crash.
• Correlation — How closely two markets move together, from −1 to +1.
• Counterparty risk — The chance the other side of a deal, like a broker or exchange, can't pay.
• Coupon — The fixed interest a bond pays each year on its face value.
• Covered call — Own 100 shares, sell a call on them: a premium now, a cap on the upside.
• CPI — The monthly US inflation report — and why the surprise is what moves price.
• Credit spread (bonds) — The extra yield a riskier bond pays over a Treasury of the same length.
• Cross margin — Your whole balance backs every leveraged trade, for better and worse.
• Cross pairs — Forex pairs with no US dollar in them, like EUR/GBP and GBP/JPY.
• Crypto wallet — The app or device that holds the keys to your coins.
• Cup and handle — A rounded dip and recovery, a small pullback, then a break of the rim.
• Currency pair — Two currencies priced against each other, like EUR/USD, and how to read the quote.
• Curve fitting — Tuning settings until the past looks perfect, and why that can mislead.

D

• Dark pool — A private venue where big stock orders trade without showing first.
• Day order — An order that cancels itself at the end of the trading day if unfilled.
• Day range — The distance between today's high and low, and what it tells you.
• Day trading — In and out the same day — nothing held overnight.
• Dead cat bounce — A short bounce inside a bigger fall, and how to tell it from a real turn.
• Dealing desk broker — A broker that sets its own prices and takes the other side of your trade.
• DeFi — Financial apps that run on a blockchain through code, not a bank.
• Deflation — Prices falling across the whole economy, and why that's not always good news.
• Delta — How much an option's price moves for each $1 move in the stock.
• Diamond hands — Slang for holding through big swings. The lesson, and the trap, behind it.
• Displacement — A fast, one-sided move made of big candle bodies, and how to measure it.
• Distribution — The sideways phase near a top where big holders slowly sell out.
• Divergence — When price and an indicator like RSI point different ways.
• Diversification — Spreading money across things that don't all move together.
• Dividend — Cash a company pays out to the people who own its shares.
• Dividend yield — The yearly dividend as a percent of the share price.
• Doji — A candle that opens and closes at about the same price: a tie.
• Dollar-cost averaging — Investing the same amount on a schedule, whatever the price does.
• Don't fight the Fed — Don't bet against the central bank's direction, and where the saying falls short.
• Dot plot — Where each Fed official thinks rates are heading, one dot each.
• Double bottom — Two lows at about the same price, like the letter W.
• Double top — Two peaks at about the same price, like the letter M.
• Drawdown — How far an account falls from its peak, and why it matters.
• Duration — How sensitive a bond's price is to a 1-point change in rates.

E

• Earnings per share (EPS) — A company's profit split across each of its shares.
• Earnings report — A company's quarterly results, what beat or miss means, and why stocks gap on them.
• ECN broker — A broker that routes your orders to a network of other traders and banks.
• Edge — A small, repeatable tilt in the odds, shown over many trades, never on one.
• EMA — A moving average that leans on the newest prices, so it reacts faster.
• Engulfing candle — A candle whose body fully covers the last candle's body.
• Equity curve — A line of your account balance after each trade, and what its shape tells you.
• ETF — One share that holds a whole basket of stocks or bonds.
• Ex-dividend date — The cut-off day that decides who gets the next dividend.
• Exercise — Using an option's right to buy or sell the shares at the strike.
• Exhaustion move — The last fast burst of a long trend, right before it runs out of fuel.
• Exotic pairs — A big currency against a smaller one, like USD/MXN, with wider costs.
• Expectancy — The average result per trade, from win rate and the size of wins and losses.
• Expense ratio — The yearly fee a fund charges, as a percent of what you hold in it.
• Expiration date — The last day an option or futures contract exists, and what happens at the end.

F

• Fair value gap — A 3-candle gap left behind by a fast move, and how to read it honestly.
• Fakeout — A false break: price pokes through a level, then snaps back.
• Fat finger — An order typed wrong, and the simple habits that stop it happening to you.
• Fed funds rate — The overnight bank rate the Fed targets, which moves rates everywhere.
• Fibonacci retracement — Lines that show how far price has pulled back inside a move.
• Fill — The moment your order actually trades, and the real price you got.
• Fill or kill — An order that fills in full right away, or doesn't fill at all.
• Flag pattern — A sharp move, then a small tilted pause: a common continuation shape.
• Flat position — Holding no open position, and why it's often the smartest choice.
• FOMC — The Fed group that sets US interest rates, and why its days are wild.
• FOMC minutes — The Fed's meeting notes, out three weeks after each decision.
• Footprint chart — A chart that shows buy and sell volume at every price inside each candle.
• Forward guidance — How central banks hint at their next move before they make it.
• Free cash flow — The cash a business has left after running itself and investing in its future.
• Front running — Trading ahead of someone else's known order, and where it's illegal.
• FUD — Fear, uncertainty and doubt. How to tell real risk from noise.
• Funding rate — The regular payment between longs and shorts on crypto perpetual futures.
• Futures contract — An exchange-traded deal on a future price, and what one point is worth.

G

• Gambler's fallacy — Why a win is never "due" after a run of losses.
• Gamma — How fast an option's delta changes as the stock moves.
• Gap — Price opens far from the last close — and why your stop can't block it.
• Gap fill — When price comes back to the level it closed at before it gapped.
• Gas fees — The fee you pay a network like Ethereum to process a transaction.
• GDP — The total value of everything a country produces, and how fast it's growing.
• GTC order — An order that stays open day after day until it fills or you cancel it.
• Guidance — A company's own forecast for coming sales or profit.

H

• Hard landing — When slowing inflation tips the economy into a recession.
• Hawkish and dovish — Central bank talk that leans toward higher rates (hawk) or lower rates (dove).
• Head and shoulders — Three peaks, the middle one highest: a common trend-ending shape.
• Hedge fund — A private pooled fund with flexible strategies, high fees and limited access.
• Hedging — Taking a second position to offset risk on the first, like insurance.
• Heikin Ashi — Smoothed candles built from averages, so trends are easier to see.
• Herd mentality — Buying because everyone's buying, and how to trade your own plan instead.
• High-frequency trading — Trading by very fast computers, in fractions of a second.
• Higher high — A new peak above the last one, the building block of an uptrend.
• Higher low — A dip that stops above the last dip: the rising floor of an uptrend.
• Hindsight bias — Why every chart looks obvious after the fact, and how to practice around it.
• HODL — A 2013 typo turned crypto motto. The lesson, and the trap, in holding.

I

• Iceberg order — A big order that shows only a small piece at a time.
• Ichimoku cloud — A 5-line indicator that shows trend and possible support or resistance at once.
• Immediate or cancel — An order that takes what's available right now and cancels the rest.
• Impermanent loss — The hidden cost of providing liquidity when prices move.
• Implied volatility — The size of move options prices are pricing in, shown as a yearly percentage.
• In the money — When an option has real value if used right now, for calls and for puts.
• Index — One number that tracks a whole group of stocks.
• Index fund — A fund that copies an index instead of picking stocks.
• Inflation — Prices rising over time, how it's measured, and why markets react to it.
• Inside day — A day that trades entirely inside the previous day's range.
• Insider trading — When trading on inside information is a crime, and when insider trades are legal.
• Institutional investor — Funds, banks and insurers that move large sums for other people.
• Interest rate — The price of borrowing money, and why it moves every market.
• Interest rate differential — The gap between two countries' interest rates, and why currencies care.
• Intraday — Within a single trading day: intraday trades, charts and highs or lows.
• Inverse ETF — A fund that aims to rise when its index falls, for one day at a time.
• Inverted yield curve — When short-term bonds pay more than long-term ones, and why it's watched.
• IPO — When a private company first sells shares and starts trading on an exchange.
• Iron condor — A put spread plus a call spread: a capped loss if price leaves a range.
• Isolated margin — Only the margin you assign backs a trade, so one loss can't drain the rest.
• IV crush — The sudden drop in option prices once a big event like earnings is over.
• IV rank — Where today's implied volatility sits in its one-year range, 0 to 100.

J

• Jackson Hole — The Fed's late-August gathering, and why one speech can move markets.

K

• Kelly criterion — A sizing formula from win rate and payoff, and why most traders use a fraction of it.
• KYC — The ID check brokers and exchanges run, and why they must.

L

• Layer 2 — Networks built on top of a blockchain to make it faster and cheaper.
• Level 2 — The deeper list of buy and sell orders waiting at each price.
• Leverage — Controlling a big trade with a small deposit, and why it cuts both ways.
• Leverage ratio — How much position each dollar of margin controls, like 50:1, worked out.
• Leveraged ETF — A fund that aims for 2x or 3x an index's move each day, then resets.
• Limit order — Buy or sell only at your price or better — with no promise of a fill.
• Limit up-limit down — The US rule that pauses one stock when it moves too far, too fast.
• Line chart — The simplest chart: one line through each closing price.
• Liquidation — When the platform force-closes a leveraged trade because margin ran out.
• Liquidity — How easy a market is to trade, and the orders resting at obvious levels.
• Liquidity crunch — When cash and credit dry up fast, and even good assets get hard to sell.
• Liquidity pool — A pot of two tokens that lets people swap without an order book.
• Long and short — Buy low, sell high — or sell high first, then buy back lower.
• Look-ahead bias — When a test peeks at the future, and why its results look too good.
• Loss aversion — Why a loss feels bigger than a gain of the same size, and how it shapes trades.
• Lot — The unit forex trades are sized in, from standard down to micro.
• Lower high — A bounce that tops out below the last one: the falling ceiling of a downtrend.
• Lower low — A new low below the last one: the falling floor of a downtrend.

M

• MACD — The gap between two moving averages — a way to see a trend speed up or slow down.
• Major pairs — The seven most traded forex pairs, all with the US dollar on one side.
• Margin — The deposit that holds a leveraged trade open, and what a margin call is.
• Margin call — Your broker asking for more money when your borrowed position falls too far.
• Margin of safety — A buffer between what something's worth and what you pay, in case you're wrong.
• Mark price — The fair-value price an exchange uses for your unrealized P&L and liquidation.
• Market cap — What the whole company is worth on the stock market.
• Market depth — The waiting buy and sell orders at each price above and below the market.
• Market maker — The firm that quotes buy and sell prices all day and earns the spread.
• Market order — Buy or sell now at the current price, fast but without a set price.
• Market structure — Reading trend direction from the chart's highs and lows.
• Max drawdown — The biggest fall from a high point to a low point, and how to plan for it.
• Mean and median — The average vs the middle trade, and why one big win can hide the real picture.
• Mean reversion — The idea that stretched prices drift back toward their average.
• Memecoin — Joke-based crypto tokens, how they launch, and why most collapse.
• Merger arbitrage — Buying a takeover target below the deal price, and the risk if the deal breaks.
• Micro lot — 1,000 units of currency, about $0.10 a pip on dollar-quoted pairs.
• Mini lot — 10,000 units of currency, about $1 a pip on dollar-quoted pairs.
• Moat — A company's lasting edge that keeps rivals from taking its customers.
• Momentum — How fast and how strongly price is moving in one direction.
• Monte Carlo simulation — Reshuffle your trades thousands of times to see the bad stretches that could come.
• Moving average — One smooth line that shows the average price over recent candles.
• Mutual fund — Many people's money pooled into one managed basket, priced once a day.

N

• NAV — What one share of a fund is worth, based on everything the fund owns.
• Net income — What a company keeps after every cost and tax: the bottom line.
• Net position — Total longs minus total shorts in one market: your real exposure.
• NFT — A one-of-a-kind token that records who owns a digital item.
• Nonfarm payrolls — The monthly count of US jobs added or lost, and why markets jump on it.
• Notional value — The full value a leveraged trade controls, worked out for futures and forex.

O

• OCO order — Two linked orders: when one fills, the other is cancelled.
• Odd lot — A stock order smaller than the standard 100-share block.
• On-balance volume — A running volume total that rises on up days and falls on down days.
• Open interest — How many futures or options contracts are still open, and how it differs from volume.
• Opening range — The high and low set in the first minutes after the open.
• Options chain — The table of every call and put on a stock, by strike and date.
• Order block — The last candle before a strong move, and why traders watch it.
• Order book — The live list of waiting buy and sell orders at each price.
• Order flow — The live stream of buy and sell orders, and who's pushing harder.
• Order types — The main ways to tell a broker how and when to buy or sell.
• Out of the money — An option whose strike isn't reached yet, so all its value is time value.
• Outside day — A day whose range covers the whole previous day, high and low.
• Overbought and oversold — Labels for price that has moved far and fast, up or down.
• Overfitting — When a strategy memorizes the past instead of learning something that lasts.
• Overnight risk — The chance price jumps while you're away, and how it affects your stop.
• Overtrading — Taking more or bigger trades than the plan calls for.

P

• P/E ratio — How many dollars buyers pay for each $1 a company earns.
• Paper hands — Slang for selling at the first scary move, and the rule that replaces nerves.
• Paper loss — A loss on a trade you haven't closed yet, and why it still counts.
• Paper trading — Practice trades on live prices with pretend money.
• Parabolic SAR — Dots that trail price and speed up as a trend runs, often used as a moving stop.
• Partial fill — When only some of your order trades and the rest keeps waiting.
• PDT rule — The old $25,000 day-trading minimum — what it was and what changed in 2026.
• Pennant — A sharp move, then a short pause that squeezes into a small point.
• Penny stock — Low-priced shares of tiny companies, and why their costs and risks run high.
• Perpetual futures — Crypto futures with no end date, high leverage and regular funding payments.
• Pip — The small unit forex prices move in, and how to count it.
• Pipette — One tenth of a pip: the small last digit on most forex quotes.
• Pivot points — Levels built from yesterday's high, low and close, used as possible support and resistance.
• Point of control — The price where the most volume traded, the longest bar on a volume profile.
• Position size — How many shares or contracts to trade, worked out from your stop.
• Position trading — Holding trades for weeks or months to follow the big trend.
• PPI — Prices businesses get for what they sell: an early look at inflation.
• Pre-market and after-hours — Stock trading before the 9:30 am open and after the 4 pm close.
• Pre-market routine — A short, fixed checklist that sets up your day before the first trade.
• Premium and discount — Splitting a price range at its halfway line, and what that really tells you.
• Previous day high and low — Yesterday's top and bottom prices: two levels many traders mark daily.
• Price action — Reading the candles and levels themselves instead of indicator lines.
• Private key — The secret code that controls your coins. Whoever has it owns them.
• Process vs outcome — Judge each trade by the decision you made, not by whether it happened to win.
• Profit factor — Total wins divided by total losses across a set of trades.
• Proof of stake — Validators lock up coins to add blocks, and can lose them for cheating.
• Proof of work — Miners spend computing power to win the right to add each block.
• Prop firm — Trade a firm's capital under strict rules — and why the loss limit comes first.
• Protective put — Buying a put on shares you own to set a floor under the loss.
• Pullback — A short dip against the trend — and the line where it stops being one.
• Pump and dump — A hype scam that leaves late buyers holding the loss. The warning signs.
• Put option — The right to sell a stock at a set price, for a set time.
• Put-call ratio — Puts traded divided by calls traded: a rough mood gauge, not a signal.

Q

• Quantitative easing — A central bank buying bonds to lower long-term rates, and its reverse, QT.

R

• R-multiple — A trade's result measured in units of what you risked.
• Rate cut — When a central bank lowers its key rate, and what it can signal.
• Rate hike — When a central bank raises its key rate, and why markets care.
• Real yield — What a bond really pays once inflation is taken out.
• Realized P&L — The result of trades you've closed, locked into your cash balance.
• Recency bias — When your last 3 trades shout louder than your last 100.
• Recession — A broad, lasting slowdown in the economy, and who officially calls it.
• Recovery factor — Net result divided by the worst drop: how much ground a test covered per bad stretch.
• Renko chart — A chart of same-size bricks that only form when price moves a set amount.
• Requote — When the broker can't fill your price and offers you a new one.
• Resistance — A ceiling on the chart where sellers have stepped in before.
• Retail trader — An individual trading their own money through a broker.
• Retest — When price breaks a level, then comes back to test it from the other side.
• Return on investment (ROI) — Your gain or loss as a percent of what you put in.
• Revenue — All the money a company brings in from sales, before any costs.
• Reversal — When a trend changes direction, rather than just pausing.
• Rho — How much an option's price shifts when interest rates move 1 point.
• Risk of ruin — The chance that a run of losses shrinks an account past the point of return.
• Risk per trade — What you'd lose if your stop is hit, set as a fixed small slice of the account.
• Risk-on and risk-off — The market's mood swing between buying risk and running for safety.
• Risk-reward ratio — What you could lose vs what you aim to gain — and the break-even math.
• Round lot — The standard trading block: usually 100 shares for US stocks.
• Round-number levels — Prices ending in zeros, where orders cluster and price often reacts.
• RSI — A 0–100 line that shows how strong recent up and down moves have been.
• Rug pull — A crypto scam where the creators drain the money and vanish. The warning signs.

S

• Safe haven — Assets investors run to when markets get scary, and why "safe" isn't "can't fall".
• Sample size — How many trades your numbers come from, and why 10 tells you very little.
• Scaling in — Building a position in pieces, while keeping the total risk fixed.
• Scaling out — Closing a trade in parts, and what it does to your results.
• Scalping — Very short trades aiming for small moves — where costs matter most.
• Seed phrase — The 12 or 24 words that control a crypto wallet, and how to guard them.
• Sell in May — An old seasonal saying. What the history shows, and why it's not a plan.
• Session high and low — The top and bottom price of one trading session, like London or New York.
• Settlement — When the cash and shares from a trade actually change hands.
• Share float — How many of a company's shares are actually free to trade.
• Sharpe ratio — Return per unit of bumpiness: how smooth the ride was, not just the result.
• Short interest — How many shares are sold short and still waiting to be bought back.
• Short selling — Selling borrowed shares first, then buying them back later.
• Short squeeze — A fast rise that forces short sellers to buy, pushing price higher still.
• Signal — A rule-based cue to consider a trade, and why it's never a guarantee.
• Slippage — When your order fills at a different price than you expected.
• Slippage tolerance — The swap setting that caps how much worse your price can get.
• SMA — The plain average of the last few closing prices, every candle counted equally.
• Smart contract — Code on a blockchain that runs by itself when its rules are met.
• Soft landing — Cooling inflation without a recession: the Fed's hoped-for outcome.
• Sortino ratio — Return compared with only the bad swings, so big wins aren't counted as risk.
• Spin-off — When a company turns one of its businesses into a new, separate company.
• Spoofing — Fake orders placed to trick other traders, and why it's a crime.
• Spread — The gap between buy and sell prices, and what it costs you.
• Spread widening — When the gap between the buy and sell price suddenly gets bigger.
• Stablecoin — Crypto tokens built to stay at $1, how they hold the peg, and how it can slip.
• Stagflation — Rising prices plus a stalling economy: the mix central banks fear most.
• Staking — Locking crypto to help run a blockchain, for rewards, with real risks.
• Standard deviation — How far results usually land from their average, worked out step by step.
• Standard lot — 100,000 units of currency, about $10 a pip on dollar-quoted pairs.
• Stochastic oscillator — A 0–100 line showing where price closed inside its recent range.
• Stock split — More shares at a lower price, same total value, and what a reverse split means.
• Stop hunt — Why price pokes through obvious levels, and how to place stops with that in mind.
• Stop loss — The exit you pick before you enter, so one trade can't cost too much.
• Stop order — An order that wakes up at your price, then fills at the market.
• Stop-limit order — An order with two prices: a trigger, then a worst price you'll accept.
• Strike price — The fixed price an option lets you buy or sell at.
• Sunk cost fallacy — Holding on because of what you've already spent, not what the chart shows now.
• Supply and demand zone — The area a strong move started from, above or below price.
• Support — A floor on the chart where buyers have stepped in before.
• Survivorship bias — Why you only hear from the winners, and how it skews stories and backtests.
• Swap (rollover) — The small interest charge or credit for holding a forex trade overnight.
• Swing high and swing low — The peaks and dips where price turned around, and how to spot them.
• Swing trading — Hold for days or weeks to catch one move, using daily charts.

T

• Take profit — The planned exit for when a trade goes your way.
• Tape reading — Reading live trades to judge who's in control. Its history and today's version.
• Tapering — When a central bank slows its bond buying, step by step, before stopping.
• The trend is your friend — Trade with the direction price is moving. And the half of the saying people forget.
• Theta — How much value an option loses each day from time passing.
• Tick — The smallest price step — and what each one is worth in futures.
• Tilt — When emotions take over and trades stop following the plan.
• Time in force — The setting that decides how long an order stays live before it's canceled.
• Timeframe — How much time each candle covers, and why the bigger chart comes first.
• To the moon — Hype slang for "this will go way up". How to read it without getting swept along.
• Token — A crypto asset built on someone else's blockchain, and how to check one.
• Total return — The full result: price change plus dividends or interest.
• Trade plan — The written setup for one trade: entry, stop, target and size, before you click.
• Trading halt — A pause in trading for one stock, for news or a sudden price swing.
• Trading hours — When each market is open, in Eastern Time, and why the busy hours matter.
• Trading plan review — A set time each week to check your rules against your journal, calmly.
• Trailing stop — A stop loss that moves up with price but never moves back down.
• Treasury bill — A short US government loan, bought at a discount and repaid in full.
• Trend — Higher highs and higher lows — how to read the direction of any chart.
• Trendline — A straight line through turning points that shows a trend's slope.
• Triangle pattern — A range that narrows to a point: ascending, descending or symmetrical.

U

• Ulcer index — A score for how deep and how long the drops lasted, not just the worst one.
• Unemployment rate — The share of people looking for work who don't have a job yet.
• Unrealized P&L — The live gain or loss on trades you still hold, and why it still matters.

V

• Vega — How much an option's price moves when expected volatility changes.
• Vertical spread — Buy one option, sell another at a different strike: capped gain, capped loss.
• VIX — A number that shows how big S&P 500 swings are expected to be over 30 days.
• Volatility — How much a market moves, and how it should change your stop and size.
• Volume — How much traded — the bars under the chart, and what they can tell you.
• Volume profile — Sideways bars showing how much traded at each price.
• VWAP — The day's average price, weighted by how much traded at each price.

W

• Walk-forward testing — Build on one stretch of data, test on the next, then roll forward and repeat.
• Wash trading — Trading with yourself to fake volume, and why it's illegal.
• Wedge — Two lines sloping the same way and squeezing together: a tiring move.
• Whale — A big holder whose orders can move price, and why chasing them backfires.
• Wick — The thin line on a candle, and why it doesn't count as a close.
• Win rate — How often you win — and why it means little without how much.

Y

• Yield curve — Short-term vs long-term bond rates, and what an inverted curve means.

Z

• Zero DTE — Options that expire the same day you trade them: fast, cheap and extremely risky.