Glossary

A to D#

All-Data (account)

View combining all your accounts, archived and demo included. Each trade is measured within its own account before combining, and a copied position counts once.

Anti-tilt

Risk engine rule that forces a pause after a losing streak.

Break-even (BE)

Stop moved to the entry price: the position can no longer lose, fees and slippage aside.

Master account, follower account

In the copier, the account you trade and the ones that reproduce its positions.

Confluence

In the strategy builder, a block that lets the signal through when n conditions out of m are true at the same time.

CVD

Cumulative Volume Delta: the running sum, over time, of the difference between buy and sell volume.

Delta

Difference between buy and sell volume on a candle or a price level.

DOM

Depth of Market: the order book, with the quantities resting at each price.

Drawdown

A fall from a peak. Realised: on closed positions. Floating: counting losses in progress. At prop firms it can be static (from the starting balance) or trailing (from the highest level reached, on equity or at end of day).

E to M#

Exit efficiency

Average share of the maximum floating gain (MFE) you actually capture on your winning trades.

Expectancy

Average result per trade, fees included, in R or in currency. Positive, the strategy wins in the long run; negative, it loses.

Footprint

A candle opened into buy and sell volume, price level by price level.

GEX, gamma levels

Market makers' gamma exposure on options. Their hedging can slow the price down or speed it up around the levels where it is strong.

Hedging

Opposite positions on the same symbol, cancelling each other out. Some prop firms forbid it.

In-sample, out-of-sample

The part of the history a strategy is tuned on, and the unseen part it is checked on.

Kara Score

The ranking score of traders on Kara, which underlies the rank.

MAE, MFE

Maximum Adverse Excursion and Maximum Favourable Excursion: how far a position went against you, and in your favour, before its exit.

Monte Carlo

A simulation that replays thousands of variants of a history (order of trades, draws with replacement) to estimate the spread of possible outcomes.

Master password, investor password

On MetaTrader, the password that allows trading, and the one that only allows reading.

P to Z#

Probability of overfitting (PBO)

Share of history splits where the best in-sample setting ends below the median out of sample. Below 0.2, the selection is reliable; above 0.5, it predicts nothing.

Profit factor

Gross gains divided by gross losses, in absolute value.

R

The risk taken on a position, used as the unit. A trade that wins twice its risk makes +2 R; a loss at the stop makes −1 R.

Actual RR, intended RR

The reward-to-risk ratio obtained (average gain over average loss), and the one your stops and targets aimed for.

Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar

Return relative to volatility (Sharpe), to downside volatility only (Sortino), or to maximum drawdown (Calmar).

Virtual stop

A stop kept by Kara's server rather than at the broker. The engine closes the position at market when the price reaches it.

Time-stop

Closing a position after a given duration, whatever its result.

TPO

Time Price Opportunity: a profile of the time spent at each price, the basis of Market Profile.

Trailing stop

A stop that moves with the price to protect part of the gain.

VWAP

Volume-weighted average price from an anchor point (session open, or a point you choose for the anchored VWAP).

Walk-forward

Validation over successive windows: tune on the past, replay on the next period, start again.

Win rate

Share of winning trades. On its own it says nothing: a 30% win rate can be profitable, an 80% one losing.