ADR (average daily range) — how far a stock typically travels in a day, as a percentage
of price. The stock's own ruler for "big move" and stop distances. (III·6)
Ask — the lowest price any seller currently accepts. You buy from the ask. (I·2)
ATR (average true range) — the ADR idea in currency units, gap-inclusive. Wilder's
construction. (III·6)
Base — a sideways range, weeks to months, where impatient holders leave and patient ones
accumulate; the launch structure for advances. (III·3)
Basis point (bp) — 0.01%. The unit trading costs are counted in. (I·9)
Bear / bull market — the index's own Stage 4 / Stage 2; conventionally a 20% decline
marks a bear, but character matters more than the threshold. (IX·1)
Bid — the highest price any buyer currently pays. You sell to the bid. (I·2)
Breadth — how many stocks participate in an index move (e.g., % above their 200-day). A
regime gauge that sees what cap-weighting hides. (IV·5)
Breakout — price clearing a base's ceiling, ideally on expanding volume; one of the three
entry types. (V·1)
Buyback — a company repurchasing and cancelling its own shares; the slice count shrinks.
(I·4)
Campaign — a sequence of trades under one written ruleset, reviewed as a whole; the unit
results are judged at. (VI·4)
Cap-weighting — index members counted by market value; why "the market" is mostly its
ten biggest names. (I·7)
Character change — a stock ceasing to act like itself after a long advance (respected
average lost, heaviest down-volume of the trend, deepening pullbacks). The selling cue.
(V·5)
Circuit breaker (personal) — a pre-written halt that fires on a number (−2R day, five
straight losses), never on self-assessment. (VII·6)
Climax run — a near-vertical late acceleration that ends advances; a
sell-into-strength signature. (V·5)
Correlation — the degree to which positions move together; five same-theme positions are
closer to one trade than five. (VI·2)
Custodian — who actually holds your shares, segregated from the broker's own money.
(I·5)
Distribution / accumulation — heavy-volume selling into rallies / heavy-volume buying on
dips; the institutional footprints volume reveals. (III·4)
Distribution day — an index down-day on rising volume; clusters of them are the classic
top signature. (IV·5)
Drawdown — the decline from the account's peak, and the reason a loss takes a larger
percentage gain to repair than the percentage it cost. (II·1)
Drawdown protocol — pre-written exposure cuts at set thresholds from the peak, ending in
a full stand-down. (VI·4)
ETF — a fund holding an index's basket, tradable like a stock; SPY and QQQ are the giant
examples. (I·7)
Expectancy — average result per trade: (win% × avg win) − (loss% × avg loss), in R. The
number that judges systems. (II·4)
Extended — too far above the nearest honest stop level for sane sizing; the standing
entry disqualifier. (V·1)
Float — shares actually available to trade; small floats move violently. (I·4)
Focus list — the written-rule, scheduled-refresh output of the screening funnel; the few
dozen names you actually watch. (IV·6)
Freeroll — after banking a partial at a profit, the banked gain covers the remaining risk: if the stop fills where it sits, the whole trade can no longer lose. A gap through the stop (II·6) can still turn the total negative. (V·4)
Gap — an open away from the prior close across untraded prices; classified by context
(breakaway, continuation, exhaustion, common). (II·6, III·7)
Limit order — your price or better; certain price, uncertain fill. (I·10)
Liquidity (market-wide) — how much money is seeking assets at all; the tide under
everything. (IX·2)
Lockup expiration — the scheduled date (~6 months post-IPO) insiders' shares become
sellable. (IX·4)
Market capitalization — price × shares outstanding; the whole company's price tag, and
the only sense in which a stock is "expensive." (I·4)
Market maker — the firm quoting both sides continuously, earning the spread, hating
inventory; why you can always sell. (I·3)
Market order — fill now at whatever's available; certain fill, uncertain price. (I·10)
Model book — a personal library of annotated historical leaders (and failures), for
training recognition on verified history. (IV·8)
Momentum effect — the documented tendency of recent outperformers to keep
outperforming; the academic leg under relative strength. (IV·1)
Money stop — the exit priced so that being wrong costs exactly 1R; the beginner's stop,
upgraded later by structure. (II·5)
Moving average (MA/EMA) — the average close over N bars, drawn as a line; slope is the
trend's plainest measurement. The 10/21/50/200-day are the conventions. (III·5)
Open risk / portfolio heat — total loss if every open position hit its current stop
today; capped by the open-risk limit and paced by the daily new-risk limit. (VI·1)
Order book — everyone's resting orders stacked by price; impatience walking the book is
what price movement is. (I·2)
Overfitting — tuning rules until they memorize one stretch of history, so the past fits
perfectly and the future comes in around chance. (VIII·2)
Pilot position — a reduced-risk probe (e.g., half R) that buys information about whether
the market is paying your setups. (VI·3)
Process grade — A–F against your own written rules, assigned before the outcome exists,
which is why it tracks how a career goes better than the P&L does. (VII·3)
Pullback — a retreat to a rising reference (21/50-day, old base top) within a confirmed
trend; entry type two, triggered by the reference holding. (V·1)
R — one unit of risk: the euros lost if the stop is hit, chosen as a fraction of the
account. All results are measured in it. (II·2)
R-multiple — a result expressed in R: −1R is the plan working; +3R is three times the
risk taken. (II·2)
Reclaim — a break of a level followed within days by a powerful recovery above it; entry
type three, stop under the shakeout low. (V·1)
Regime — the market's prevailing condition, read from the index's trend, breadth and
distribution count; decides how much anyone should be trading. (IV·5)
Relative strength (RS) — performance versus a named benchmark over a window. The
comparison is the whole term, so "stronger than what?" is always a fair question. (IV·1)
RS line — stock price ÷ benchmark price, plotted; direction is everything, and RS highs
before price highs are the tell. (IV·2)
Scale-out — selling planned portions at different points; buys banked gains and riskless
holding at the price of the best case. (V·4)
Settlement (T+1) — the legal exchange of shares for money, one business day after the
trade in the US. (I·5)
Slippage — the gap between decision price and fill price; care about how you enter keeps
it small. (I·9)
Spread — ask minus bid; the toll both directions of every round trip pay. (I·2)
Stage analysis — Weinstein's four-stage life cycle (base, advance, top, decline); stage
2 is the only buyable one. (III·2)
Stop-market / stop-limit — dormant orders triggered at a level, becoming a market or
limit order respectively; protective stops are stop-market, and the stop-limit gap trap is
why. (I·10)
Support / resistance — levels where buying / selling has repeatedly appeared;
unfinished business becoming orders. Broken levels swap roles. (III·3)
Survivorship bias — testing the past using only what survived into the present; the
backtest lie that flatters everything. (VIII·2)
Technical stop — the stop at the price where the trade's idea has failed, buffered by
ATR, sized by the division. (III·3, V·3)
Trailing stop — a stop ratcheted toward the trade — under higher lows or a respected
average — and never away. (V·3)
Volatility contraction — pullbacks shallowing and volume drying late in a base; supply
exhausting before expansion. Minervini's VCP signature. (III·6)
Volume dry-up — unusually quiet volume late in a base; the sellers are finished. (III·4)
Win rate — the percentage of trades that profit; meaningless without the average win and
loss beside it. (II·4)