Trading Glossary
The vocabulary of market structure, explained.
38 institutional-grade terms in plain English: volatility, dealer gamma, regimes, cross-asset gravity, and the risk discipline behind every trade. Free to read.
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New to trading? Start here. Risk, psychology, and chart literacy — the survival skills that come before any signal. Work through them top to bottom.
- How Markets Actually WorkBid, ask, spread, and the three order types every trade is built from — the literacy that comes before everything else.
- Price Action & Market StructureHow price actually behaves on a chart — higher highs, lower lows, support and resistance — learned before any indicator.
- Technical Analysis BasicsCandlesticks, the handful of chart patterns that matter, and moving averages — your first real toolkit.
- Risk Management & the 3-5-7 RulePreserving capital is the whole game. Position sizing, stop-losses, and a simple cap that keeps you in business.
- Trading PsychologyManaging fear and greed is roughly 80% of the job — an edge is useless if you cannot follow it.
- Trading Styles: Day vs SwingMatch the timeframe to your life — the best style is simply the one you can actually execute.
- Common Beginner MistakesThe handful of errors that blow up most new accounts — named, so you can sidestep each one.
- Your First Paper TradePractice with virtual money until your process is boring and repeatable — then risk a single real dollar.
Foundations
The physics of markets — the forces that move price before any indicator does.
- The Physics of MarketsWhy Core Strata builds bias from forces (liquidity, leverage, narrative) instead of patterns.
- LiquidityThe capital available to transact at each price level — the substrate of every move.
- Narrative HeatHow densely a single story is dominating the news flow — the dimension that compresses fundamentals into bias.
- Supply & Demand AsymmetryThe hidden imbalance between resting bids and offers — the quietest predictor of the next move.
- Forced Flow & LeverageThe trades that *must* happen — margin calls, gamma hedges, peg defenses. Where outsized moves come from.
Volatility & Risk
How the market prices uncertainty: VIX, VVIX, term structure, velocity.
Options Structure
Dealer hedging mechanics: GEX, gamma flips, dealer exposure regimes.
- GEX (Gamma Exposure)Net dealer gamma vs spot — the mechanical force that dampens or amplifies every SPX move.
- GEX FlipThe SPX level where dealer gamma flips sign — the regime boundary of the day.
- GammaHow fast option delta changes — the second derivative of price exposure.
- DeltaHow much an option price moves for a $1 move in the underlying — the directional exposure number.
- VegaHow much an option price moves for a 1-vol-point change in implied volatility.
- ThetaHow much an option price decays per day — the cost of holding optionality.
Momentum & Strength
Participation and pace: relative volume, ROC, breadth.
- RVOL (Relative Volume)Current volume vs an N-period baseline — distinguishes "real" moves from thin-flow noise.
- ROC (Rate of Change)Price momentum normalised over an N-period lookback — the simplest, most honest momentum measure.
- VWAP (Volume-Weighted Average Price)The average price weighted by volume traded — institutional cost basis and intraday fair-value reference.
- VPOC (Volume Point of Control)The single price level with the highest traded volume in the period — the magnetic centre of the auction.
- Divergence EngineStrata's probabilistic detector for price–indicator divergences — the early-warning of trend exhaustion.
Macro & Regime
Cross-asset gravity: DXY, yields, regime states, kill-switches.
- DXY (Dollar Index)USD strength vs a basket of major currencies — the gravitational constant of every cross-asset price.
- US10Y (10-year Treasury Yield)The price of duration in the world's reserve currency — the discount rate for everything else.
- Yield Suction & Yield MagnetWhen the 10-year yield runs hot, one force pulls capital into the dollar and out of equities — the two faces of the "yield vacuum".
- Regime States (PEACE / SLIPPERY / WAR / CRISIS)The four operating modes of the bias engine — which playbook is active.
- Kill-SwitchThe protective override that suppresses risk-on signals when macro/regime gates all flip together.
- Cross-Asset CorrelationHow much different instruments move together — the highest-leverage non-directional signal in the dashboard.
Execution & Risk Mgmt
Translating bias into a trade: tradeability, sizing, settlement, signal tiers.
- Tier 0 NewsThe highest-impact macro/geopolitical headlines — anything that breaks correlations.
- TradeabilityWhether the *current* market microstructure can absorb your size at acceptable slippage.
- Composite AlphaRegime-adjusted single-number score combining tier-weighted news + LLM brain interpretation.
- Sharpe RatioRisk-adjusted return — the only honest scoreboard for comparing strategies across instruments and timeframes.
- DrawdownThe peak-to-trough decline in equity — the psychological cost of every strategy.