Glossary

Every trading term used in the course, in plain words, with the lesson where it is first explained. Read it when a word stops you.

Educational trade idea, not financial advice. CFDs are leveraged and most retail traders lose money. We are an independent Vantage partner and earn a commission if you trade via our link.

118 terms

A

Asian range: The high and low gold builds during the Asian hours (about 7 pm to 3 am New York). London loves to sweep one side of it before picking a direction.
Ask: The price you buy at. Always a touch above the bid; the gap between them is the spread.

B

Backtest: Scrolling back on the chart and pretending it is live, marking every setup and its result in R. Thirty trades minimum before it means anything.
Balance: Your account value with every trade closed. It only changes when a trade closes. Equity is the live number.
Base and quote currency: In XAUUSD, gold is the base (the thing being priced) and the US dollar is the quote (what it is priced in).
Bias: The side you are looking to trade today, decided from D1 and H4 before the session. No bias, no trade.
Bid: The price you sell at. Always a touch below the ask.
Boredom trade: A trade opened because nothing was happening, not because a setup appeared. Coin-flip odds minus the spread.
Break of structure (BOS): A candle closing beyond the previous swing high in an uptrend, or the previous swing low in a downtrend. The trend saying "I am continuing". Close, not wick.
Breakeven: Moving the stop loss to your entry price once the trade is in profit, so the worst case becomes zero. Optional, decided in the plan.
Breakout: A candle closing outside a range or through a level. Most fail on the first try, so beginners leave them alone.
Broker: The company that gives you the platform, shows you prices, holds your deposit and fills your orders. Ours is Vantage.
Buffer: A few dollars added beyond the invalidation point so normal overshoot does not clip your stop: $2 to $5 on gold, $150 to $300 on bitcoin.
Buy limit: A pending order to buy below the current price, only if price comes down to your level.
Buy stop: A pending order to buy above the current price, once price breaks through a level. Beginners leave these alone.

C

Candle: One bar on the chart showing four prices for its period: open, high, low, close. Body from open to close, wicks to the high and low.
Candle close: The last price of a candle's period. The only price that confirms a break; a candle in progress is an opinion.
CFD (contract for difference): A deal with the broker to exchange the price difference between opening and closing a position. You never own the gold or the coin.
Change of character (CHoCH): A candle closing below the last higher low in an uptrend (or above the last lower high in a downtrend). A warning that the trend cracked, not proof it reversed.
Chasing: Entering far from the level because price already ran, which forces a huge stop and a small target.
Commission: A fixed fee per lot on Raw ECN accounts, charged on open and on close ($3 per lot per side at Vantage).
Confirmation: The second piece of evidence you wait for before acting: a break of structure or a fair value gap after a sweep, never the sweep alone.
Confluence: Several tools pointing at the same price: a level, plus a discount, plus a fair value gap. That is a zone worth watching.
Consensus (forecast): The number economists expect on average before a release. What the market has already priced.
Contract size: How much of the real thing one lot represents: 100 ounces for gold at Vantage. Check bitcoin in the Specification window.
CPI (consumer price index): US consumer inflation, released monthly at 8:30 am New York. Core strips out food and energy; the Fed watches core.

D

Daily loss limit: The maximum R you accept to lose in one day before the platform closes: 2R in our plan.
Demand zone: Where a strong move up started. Box the last few candles before the move; expected to act as support.
Discount: The lower half of a swing, measured from swing low to swing high. In an uptrend, the half where you look to buy.
Dollar index (DXY): The US dollar measured against a basket of other currencies. Gold usually moves the opposite way.
Downtrend: A sequence of lower highs and lower lows. Sell rallies, do not buy dips.
Drawdown: How far your account has fallen from its highest point.

E

Economic calendar: A schedule of data releases with time, impact, actual, forecast and previous. Set the timezone first.
Edge: A repeatable reason why your trades should make money over many attempts.
Entity: The specific legal Vantage company you sign with, which depends on your country and sets your leverage and protections.
Entry: The price where your position opens. Decided last: stop first, size second, entry last.
Equal highs and lows: Two or more swing points at nearly the same price. The biggest liquidity pools, because everyone's stop sits just beyond them.
Equilibrium: The exact middle of a range or a swing: high plus low, divided by two. Below it is discount, above it is premium.
Equity: Balance plus the floating profit or loss of open trades. What the account is worth right now. The truth.
ETF flows: Daily net money entering or leaving the spot bitcoin ETFs (funds listed on the stock market that hold real bitcoin). Real demand, published every day.
Expectancy: Your average result per trade in R over many trades: win rate times average win, minus loss rate times average loss.

F

Fair value gap (FVG): Three candles where the high of the first never touches the low of the third (or the mirror). The hole the big middle candle left; price usually comes back to fill it.
Fibonacci retracement: A ruler that splits a swing into fixed fractions (0.5, 0.618, 0.786) to measure how deep a pullback went. Not a prophecy.
Floating profit and loss: The result of an open trade, changing with every tick. Not real until you close.
FOMC: The Fed's rate-setting meeting, eight times a year: statement at 2:00 pm New York, press conference at 2:30 pm. The biggest scheduled event for gold.
FOMO: Fear of missing out: the urge to enter after a move already happened. The setup is at the level, not $25 above it.
Free margin: Equity minus margin. What you have left to open more trades.

G

Gap: When a market opens at a different price from where it closed, with no trades in between. Gold gaps over weekends; your stop fills wherever it opens.

H

Halving: The scheduled event, roughly every four years, that cuts the supply of new bitcoin in half. Known years ahead, so mostly priced in.
Higher high and higher low (HH, HL): Each swing high above the last one, each swing low above the last one. The staircase of an uptrend.

I

Invalidation: The price at which the reason for your trade no longer exists. The stop loss lives there, nowhere else.
Investing: Buying an asset and holding it for years. Paid by time, not by direction. Not what this course teaches.

J

Journal: One row per trade: prices, size, R result, execution note, screenshot, feeling. The only thing that remembers.

K

KYC (know your customer): The identity check every regulated broker must do: a photo ID and a proof of address under three months old. Needed for a live account, not for the practice account.

L

Leverage: Holding a position bigger than your deposit. 1:100 means every $1 of yours controls $100. It changes how much margin is locked, not how much you lose.
Liquidation: Crypto slang for a stop-out: the platform closing your positions because the margin ran out.
Liquidity: Resting orders waiting to fire: stop losses and pending orders just above obvious highs and below obvious lows. Big players go where the orders are.
Liquidity provider: A big bank or trading firm the broker passes your orders to.
Long: A position that profits when price goes up. Buy first, sell later.
Lot: The unit of position size. 1 lot of gold is 100 ounces, so $100 for every $1 gold moves. 0.01 lot is the smallest size and your first hundred trades.
Lower high and lower low (LH, LL): Each swing high below the last one, each swing low below the last one. The staircase of a downtrend.

M

Margin: The part of your money the platform locks to hold a position. It is a deposit, not your risk.
Margin call: The warning, and in practice the moment the broker starts closing your positions for you.
Margin level: Equity divided by margin, in percent. Your distance from a stop-out.
Market order: "Fill me now, at whatever the price is." You click Buy or Sell and you are in within a second.
Market Watch: The list of symbols with live bid and ask prices on the left of MT5 (View menu, Market Watch). The Quotes tab on the phone.
MetaTrader 5 (MT5): The free trading platform where you see prices and place orders. Made by MetaQuotes, used by Vantage.

N

Negative balance protection: A rule that stops a retail account from going below zero after a gap. Depends on your Vantage entity; read the client agreement.
NFP (non-farm payrolls): The US monthly job count, first Friday of the month at 8:30 am New York. Strong jobs, dollar up, gold usually down.

O

One-click trading: Buy and sell buttons on the chart that fire instantly with no stop loss. Keep it off.
Order block (OB): The last red candle before a strong move up that broke structure (or the last green one before a move down). A zone where you expect a reaction, never a blind entry.
Order ticket: The window that opens on New Order (or F9): symbol, type, volume, stop loss, take profit, Buy or Sell. Volume is the loss dial.
Overtrading: Taking more trades than the plan allows, usually outside the setup. Costs you twice: spread and mistakes.

P

Partial: Closing part of the position at a first target and leaving the rest running.
Pending order: Any limit or stop order sitting there waiting to be filled.
Pip: The smallest standard price step: $0.01 on gold (so $1 is 100 pips), 0.0001 on most forex pairs.
Position: A trade that is open right now. You close the position when you get out.
Position size: The lot size of a trade, calculated from the 1% risk and the stop distance. Never guessed, always rounded down.
Practice account: A Vantage account with fake money, real live prices, zero risk. Vantage calls it a demo account. Where the whole course happens.
Premium: The upper half of a swing. Expensive. In a downtrend, the half where you look to sell.
Previous day high and low (PDH, PDL): Yesterday's extremes. The most common pools to get swept before the real move.
Prop firm: A company that funds traders who pass an evaluation and follow strict daily loss rules. You do not need one to use its rules.
Pullback: A short move against the main direction, a landing on the staircase. Where you look to enter in a trend.

R

R: The amount you risk on one trade. A trade that makes twice that is +2R; a full loss is -1R. The unit your journal is written in.
Range: A box: a high touched at least twice and a low touched at least twice, with price bouncing between them. Trade the edges, never the middle.
Resistance: A level above price where sellers showed up and turned price down before.
Retail trader: An individual trading their own money, as opposed to a bank or a fund. Most lose; the broker publishes the number.
Retest: Price coming back to a level it just broke or swept. The entry we look for, including on news days.
Revenge trading: Opening a trade to win back a loss instead of because a setup appeared. Where accounts actually end.
Risk to reward: The target distance divided by the stop distance. A 2R target is 2 to 1, our minimum.
Rollover: The server's end-of-day moment when the swap is charged: server midnight, 5 pm New York.

S

Sell limit: A pending order to sell above the current price, only if price comes up to your level.
Session: A block of the day when one region's banks and traders are active: Asia, London, New York.
Setup: All the conditions of your strategy present at the same time. Six of seven ticked is nothing.
Short: A position that profits when price goes down. Sell first, buy back later. One click on a CFD.
Slippage: The difference between the price you asked for and the price you got. Small normally, big during news.
Specification window: Right click a symbol in Market Watch, then Specification: contract size, minimum volume, swaps and trading hours.
Spread: The gap between the ask and the bid. Your cost to enter and exit, baked into the price. Wide when the market is quiet or scared.
Standard STP and Raw ECN: Vantage's two main account types. Standard STP: the cost sits inside the spread. Raw ECN: tighter spread plus a fixed commission per lot. Beginners take Standard STP.
Stop hunt (sweep): Price pushed just beyond an obvious high or low to fire the stops sitting there, then reversing. A wick through, a close back inside.
Stop loss (SL): The price where the trade closes automatically at a loss, placed where the idea is wrong. Typed in the ticket before the entry. Never moved away from price.
Stop-out: The margin level at which the platform closes your trades for you. The seatbelt you refused to put on, applied later and harder.
Structure: The sequence of swing highs and swing lows a chart leaves behind, read in order. The alphabet of everything in modules M4 and M5.
Supply zone: Where a strong move down started; expected to act as resistance.
Support: A level below price where buyers showed up and turned price up before.
Swap: The daily interest charged on a position held past rollover. Gold longs usually pay; crypto longs pay every day, weekends included.
Swing high and swing low: A candle whose high is above both neighbours (swing high) or whose low is below both (swing low). The three-candle rule.

T

Take profit (TP): The price where the trade closes automatically in profit, placed at the next level where the other side shows up. At least 2R away.
Timeframe: How much time one candle covers: M5 is five minutes, H1 one hour, H4 four hours, D1 one day. Bigger timeframe is the boss.
Trade idea: A published setup with market, direction, entry zone, stop, targets and reasoning. Educational, never an instruction; you size for yourself.
Trading: Renting a price move for minutes, hours or days, up or down, then leaving. Paid for direction and for losing small.
Trailing stop: A stop that follows price at a fixed distance. Useful later, not in month one.

U

Uptrend: A sequence of higher highs and higher lows. Buy pullbacks, do not sell tops.
UTC: The world reference clock. Bangkok is UTC+7, seven hours ahead. Course times are given in New York time with Bangkok in brackets.

V

Volume: The field on the order ticket where you type the lot size. The one box that decides how much you can lose.

W

Wick: The thin line above or below a candle's body, reaching the high or the low. A long wick means rejection.
Win rate: The share of your trades that end in profit. Matters less than the size of your wins versus your losses.

X

XAUUSD and BTCUSD: The platform codes for one ounce of gold in US dollars and one bitcoin in US dollars. The two markets this course trades.

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