Forex Glossary
Forex encyclopedia, forex terms
Ask (Offer) price of the offer, the price you buy for.
Bank Rate the percentage rate at which central bank of a country lends money to the countrys commercial banks.
Bid price of the demand, the price you sell for.
Broker the market participating body which serves as the middleman between retail traders and larger commercial institutions.
Cable a Forex traders slang word GBP/USD currency pair.
CFD a Contract for Difference special trading instrument that allows financial speculation on stocks, commodities and other instruments without actually buying.
Commission broker commissions for operation handling.
CPI consumer price index the statistical measure of inflation based upon changes of prices of a specified set of goods.
EA (Expert Advisor) an automated script which is used by the trading platform software to manage positions and orders automatically without (or with little) manual control.
ECN Broker a type of Forex brokerage firm that provide its clients direct access to other Forex market participants. ECN brokers dont discourage scalping, dont trade against the client, dont charge spread (low spread is defined by current market prices) but charge commissions for every order.
Fibonacci Retracements the levels with a high probability of trend break or bounce, calculated as the 23.6%, 32.8%, 50% and 61.8% of the trend range.
Flat (Square) neutral state when all your positions are closed.
Fundamental Analysis the analysis based only on news, economic indicators and global events.
GTC (Good Till Cancelled) order to buy or sell of a currency with a fixed price or worse. The order is alive (good) until execution or cancellation.
Hedging maintaining a market position which secures the existing open positions in the opposite direction.
Jobber a slang word for a trader which is aimed toward fast but small and short-term profit from an intra-day trading. Jobber rarely leaves open positions overnight.
Limit Order order for a broker to buy the lot for fixed or lesser price or sell the lot for fixed or better price. Such price is called limit price.
Liquidity the measure of markets which describes relationship between the trading volume and the price change.
Long the position which is in a Buy direction. In Forex, the primary currency when bought is long and another is short.
Loss the loss from closing long position at lower rate than opening or short position with higher rate than opening, or if the profit from a position closing was lower than broker commission on it.
Lot definite amount of units or amount of money accepted for operations handling (usually it is a multiple of 100).
Margin money, the investor needs to keep at broker account to execute trades. It supplies the possible losses which may occur in margin trading.
Margin Account account which is used to hold investors deposited money for FOREX trading.
Margin Call demand of a broker to deposit more margin money to the margin account when the amount in it falls below certain minimum.
Market Order order to buy or sell a lot for a current market price.
Market Price the current price for which the currency is traded for on the market.
Offer (Ask) price of the offer, the price you buy for.
Open Position (Trade) position on buying (long) or selling (short) for a currency pair.
Order order for a broker to buy or sell the currency with a certain rate.
Pivot Point the primary support/resistance point calculated basing on the previous trends High, Low and Close prices.
Pip (Point) the last digit in the rate (e.g. for EUR/USD 1 point = 0.0001).
Profit (Gain) positive amount of money gained for closing the position.
Principal Value the initial amount of money of the invested.
Realized Profit/Loss gain/loss for already closed positions.
Resistance price level for which the intensive selling can lead to price increasing (up-trend)
Settled (Closed) Position closed positions for which all needed transactions has been made.
Slippage execution of order for a price different than expected (ordered), main reasons for slippage are fast market, low liquidity and low brokers ability to execute orders.
Spread difference between ask and bid prices for a currency pair.
Stop-Limit Order order to sell or buy a lot when the market reaches certain price. Usually is a combination of stop-order and limit-order.
Stop-Loss Order order to sell or buy a lot for a certain price or worse. It is used to avoid extra losses when market moves in the opposite direction.
Support price level for which intensive buying can lead to the price decreasing (down-trend).
Technical Analysis the analysis based only on the technical market data (quotes) with the help of various technical indicators.
Trend direction of market which has been established with influence of different factors.
Unrealized (Floating) Profit/Loss a profit/loss for your non-closed positions.
Useable Margin amount of money in the account that can be used for trading.
Used Margin amount of money in the account already used to hold open positions open.