This trading glossary is arranged A to Z. Tap a letter to jump, and follow the links for the longer explanation behind each term.
- Address
- A string of characters that identifies where crypto can be sent on a particular network. USDT addresses on Tron start with T; on Ethereum they start with 0x. See USDT explained.
- Ask
- The price at which a seller is willing to sell, and so the price you pay when you buy at market.
- Base currency
- The first currency in a forex pair. In GBP/USD, the pound is the base and the price shows how many dollars one pound costs.
- Bid
- The price at which a buyer is willing to buy, and so the price you receive when you sell at market.
- Blockchain
- A shared ledger of transactions grouped into linked blocks and kept in sync by many independent computers. See how crypto works.
- CFD
- Contract for difference: an agreement with a provider to exchange the change in an asset's price, without owning the asset. Usually leveraged.
- Cold wallet
- Crypto storage kept offline, such as a hardware device, to reduce exposure to online theft.
- Custody
- Who holds an asset on your behalf. A custodial platform holds your crypto keys; in self-custody you hold them yourself.
- Dividend
- Cash a company hands back to shareholders, usually from earnings; the board can reduce or scrap it. More in our share market explainer.
- Drawdown
- The fall in an account's value from a peak to a later low, often quoted as a percentage. Central to funded trader program rules.
- ERC20
- Ethereum's common rulebook for tokens. Moving ERC20 USDT costs gas, paid in ETH.
- Exchange
- A venue where buyers and sellers are matched, such as a stock exchange or a crypto exchange.
- Free float
- The shares of a company available for public trading, excluding large locked-in holdings. Used to weight indices such as the Sensex.
- Gap
- A jump in price between one trade and the next, typically when a market reopens after news.
- Halving
- The scheduled halving of Bitcoin's block reward every 210,000 blocks. The April 2024 halving cut it to 3.125 BTC. See what is Bitcoin.
- Index
- A number that tracks the value of a basket of shares, such as the S&P 500 or the Sensex.
- KYC
- Know your customer: the identity checks regulated platforms must carry out before and during an account relationship.
- Leverage
- Exposure bigger than the cash you put up; at 30:1, every $1 of deposit carries $30 of market exposure. Try the margin calculator.
- Limit order
- An instruction with a price ceiling for buying or a price floor for selling; it waits until the market reaches that level.
- Liquidity
- How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. Liquid markets have narrow spreads.
- Lot
- A standard unit of forex trade size: 100,000 units of the base currency for a standard lot. Gold is commonly 100 ounces per lot.
- Maker fee
- The fee paid when your order adds liquidity to an order book, usually lower than the taker fee. See trading fees explained.
- Margin
- The deposit a broker holds as collateral while a leveraged position is open.
- Margin call
- The alert, or forced closing, that follows when account equity runs low against the margin in use. For UK and EU retail clients, close-out starts at a 50% margin level.
- Market order
- An order to trade immediately at the best available price.
- Network fee
- The fee paid to miners or validators to process a blockchain transaction. Also called gas on Ethereum.
- Pip
- The usual price step for currencies, 0.0001 on most pairs and 0.01 when the yen is involved. Our pip calculator turns it into money.
- Private key
- The secret behind a crypto address. Anyone holding it, or the recovery words that generate it, can spend what the address holds.
- Quote currency
- The second currency in a forex pair, in which the price is expressed.
- Recovery phrase
- The 12 or 24 words that can restore a crypto wallet. Never share it or type it into a website.
- Satoshi
- The smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred-millionth of a coin.
- Slippage
- The gap between the price on screen when you clicked and the price your order actually got.
- Spread
- The gap between the bid and the ask. You pay it on every round trip.
- Stablecoin
- A token built to track an outside value, mostly the US dollar, relying on reserves its issuer says it keeps.
- Stop-loss
- A pre-set exit that shuts a losing trade at a chosen level; if the price gaps past it, the fill can be worse.
- Swap
- Interest debited or credited each night a leveraged forex or CFD trade stays open beyond 17:00 New York time.
- T+1
- Settlement one business day after the trade date, the standard for US shares since May 2024.
- TRC20
- The token standard on the Tron network. USDT on Tron is a TRC20 token and uses TRX network resources for fees.
- USDT
- Tether's dollar-pegged token, circulating on Tron, Ethereum and other chains. Full guide: USDT explained.
- Volatility
- How widely and quickly a price moves. Crypto is typically far more volatile than major currencies.