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Glossary

Plain-language definitions for every term we use: structure, price action, risk, and execution. No jargon left standing.

Market structure

Trend: A sequence of higher highs and higher lows (up) or lower highs and lower lows (down). The path of least resistance until structure breaks.
Range: Price oscillating between a defined high and low with no clear trend. Edges are where decisions get made.
Support: A price area where buying has previously overcome selling. It holds until it doesn't. Then it often becomes resistance.
Resistance: A price area where selling has previously overcome buying. A clean break through it can flip it into support.
Breakout: Price leaving a range or level with intent. Real ones hold; false ones snap back. Participation tells you which.
Higher timeframe (HTF): The larger chart (daily, weekly) that sets context. It controls the smaller ones; lower timeframes only ever borrow its permission.

Price action

Candlestick: One bar showing open, high, low, and close for a period. The body is conviction; the wick is rejection.
Level: A specific price that has mattered before and is likely to matter again. We trade the level, not the story around it.
Liquidity: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving the price. It's also where stop orders cluster, so price is drawn to it.
Volume profile: A map of how much trading happened at each price. High-volume nodes act like magnets; low-volume gaps get crossed quickly.
Order flow: The real-time stream of buy and sell orders hitting the book. It shows intent before the candle finishes printing it.
Confluence: When several independent reasons point at the same level. More confluence, higher-quality decision. Never a guarantee.

Risk & position sizing

R (risk unit): The amount you lose if a trade hits its stop. Everything else (targets, results) is measured in multiples of R.
Fixed-fractional sizing: Risking a set fraction of capital per idea (e.g. 0.25R–1R). It keeps any single trade from deciding your account.
Stop-loss: A pre-set exit that caps the loss on a position. Placed at the level that proves the idea wrong, not at a round number.
Risk/reward: The ratio of what you risk to what you stand to make. A positive edge needs the wins to outweigh the losses over many trades.
Drawdown: The peak-to-trough drop in an account. Survival is about keeping it shallow enough to recover from.
Position size: How much of an asset you hold. The one variable you fully control. Size to the level, never the emotion.

Orders & execution

Market order: An instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best available price. Fast, but you accept whatever the book gives you.
Limit order: An order to trade only at a chosen price or better. You control the price; the market controls whether you get filled.
Slippage: The gap between the price you expected and the price you got. Worse in thin liquidity and fast markets.
Spread: The difference between the best bid and best ask. A cost you pay on entry and exit, so tighter is cheaper.
Fill: Confirmation that your order executed, in whole or in part. No fill, no position.

Instruments & markets

Equity: A share of ownership in a company. Prices move on earnings, rates, and sentiment.
Index: A basket of assets tracked as one number (e.g. an equity index). A read on the whole, not the parts.
Futures: A contract to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date. Leveraged, standardized, and time-bound.
Leverage: Borrowed exposure that magnifies both gains and losses. It amplifies your edge and your mistakes equally.
Volatility: How much and how fast price moves. Higher volatility means wider stops and smaller size for the same risk.

Discipline & process

Trading plan: A written set of rules for entries, exits, sizing, and conditions, decided before the market opens, not during.
Trade journal: A record of every trade and the reasoning behind it. It grades the decision, not just the outcome.
Edge: A repeatable reason your trades make money over time. Process, not prediction. Proven by the equity curve.
Hypothetical performance: Results from a strategy that wasn't traded with real money. Useful for study, but it never carries live-market risk, so treat it with caution.

Every term here is taught in context in the Academy, worked through on real charts, not memorized from a list.