Glossary.
The 39 words you'll meet most in the rooms and the volumes, in plain English. Every term has its own link, so you can send one to someone.
B
- Balance and equity
- Your balance is the money in the account with no trades open. Equity is the balance plus or minus whatever your open trades are doing right now. Margin and stop outs are worked out from equity.
- Break of structure
- Price breaking past the last swing high in an uptrend, or the last swing low in a downtrend, which says the trend is carrying on. Often shortened to BOS.
- Breakeven
- A trade that closes at its entry price, so it neither makes nor loses pips. In the Printers count a breakeven is never a win, and it counts in the win rate.
C
- CFD
- A contract for difference: you trade the change in a price without owning the thing itself. Gold in MT5 is traded as a CFD. CFDs use leverage, and most retail accounts lose money trading them.
- Change of character
- The first break against the trend, such as a lower low after a run of higher lows. It's an early sign the trend may be turning, not proof. Often shortened to CHoCH.
D
- Drawdown
- How far an account has fallen from its highest point, as an amount or a per cent. A 20% drawdown needs a 25% gain just to get back to where it was.
E
- Entry range
- Two prices instead of one, like BUY 3906-3908. The room is happy to be filled anywhere between them. How each room counts a range is on its own page.
F
- Fair value gap
- A gap left by a fast candle, where the candles either side of it don't overlap. Price often comes back to fill some of it. Shortened to FVG.
- Fibonacci
- Levels drawn between a swing high and a swing low at set ratios (38.2%, 50%, 61.8% and others), used to judge how far a pullback might run.
- FOMC
- The US Federal Reserve's committee that sets interest rates. Its decisions and the press conference after them can move gold sharply, so many traders stay flat through them.
I
- Introducing broker
- A business that introduces traders to a broker and is paid a share of the commission on their trades. Printers is an introducing broker partner of Vantage Markets. Shortened to IB.
L
- Leverage
- Trading a bigger position than the money you put up. At 1:100, 1,000 of margin controls a 100,000 position. It makes losses bigger as well as wins.
- Limit order
- An order to buy below the current price, or sell above it, that only fills if price comes to you. A buy limit or sell limit sits on the chart until it fills or you cancel it.
- Liquidity
- Orders waiting in the market, often stops clustered above old highs and below old lows. Price is often drawn to them before it turns.
- Long and short
- Long is buying, to profit if price rises. Short is selling, to profit if price falls. With a CFD you can go short as easily as long.
- Lot
- The unit for trade size in MT5. One standard lot of gold is usually 100 ounces, and the smallest trade is usually 0.01 lots. Check your broker's symbol specification.
M
- Margin
- The money a broker sets aside from your account to keep a trade open. It isn't a fee: it's freed again when the trade closes.
- Margin call and stop out
- If equity falls too far below the margin your trades need, the broker warns you (a margin call), and past a set level it starts closing trades for you (a stop out).
- Market order
- An order filled straight away at the best price available. In a fast market the fill can be a little different from the price you saw.
- Market structure
- The pattern of swing highs and lows. Higher highs and higher lows make an uptrend; lower highs and lower lows make a downtrend.
- MT5
- MetaTrader 5, the trading platform most brokers use, Vantage included. It's where you place trades and where PRINTSYNC places them for you.
N
- NFP
- Non-Farm Payrolls, the US jobs figures, usually out on the first Friday of the month at 1:30pm UK time. Gold often moves hard on the release.
O
- Order block
- The last candle against the move before a strong move away, read as an area where large orders sat. Price often reacts when it comes back to one.
P
- Partial close
- Closing part of a trade and leaving the rest to run, such as taking half off at TP1. Rooms post these as replies to the signal.
- Pip
- A pip in gold is 0.10 of price, so 10 pips is a 1.00 move. Every result on this site is counted in gold pips.
- Position size
- How many lots you trade. It decides what each pip is worth to you, so it decides what a stop costs. The position size calculator works it out from your risk.
R
- Risk free
- Room shorthand for moving the stop to entry once a trade is in profit. It doesn't mean the trade can't lose: price can gap or slip past the stop, and the rest of the account is still at risk.
- Risk to reward
- What a trade stands to lose against what it stands to make. An 80 pip stop with a 160 pip target is 1:2.
- Runner
- The part of a trade left open after the first targets are taken, to catch a bigger move. Usually with the stop at entry or better.
S
- Session
- The part of the day when one financial centre is open: Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York. Gold is often busiest when London and New York overlap.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you asked for and the price you got. It happens most around news and at the weekly open.
- Spread
- The gap between the buy and sell price, which is a cost on every trade. It's usually tight on gold but widens around news and at the daily and weekly open.
- Stop loss
- The price where a losing trade closes on its own. Every Printers signal comes with one. Shortened to SL.
- Stop to entry
- Moving the stop loss to the entry price once a trade is moving your way, so a turn against you closes it at breakeven rather than a loss.
- Support and resistance
- Prices where buying has held price up before (support) or selling has held it down (resistance). They're areas rather than exact lines.
- Swap
- The overnight charge or credit for holding a trade past the daily roll. It depends on the direction and the broker, and one night a week it counts three times over to cover the weekend.
T
- TP1
- Take profit one, the first target on a signal. In the Printers count a trade is a win once TP1 is hit before the stop.
W
- Win rate
- Wins out of wins, losses and breakevens, as Printers counts it. Closed early and anything not scored stay out of it.
X
- XAUUSD
- The symbol for gold priced in US dollars, the one market every Printers room trades. XAU is the code for an ounce of gold.