The Nfinity glossary
Every word you'll hear in the Academy and the community, in plain English, with an example for each.
Trading has its own language, and most of it sounds harder than it is. Keep this page open while you learn. Every term comes with a plain-English meaning and a quick example.
The market
Market. A place where buyers and sellers agree on prices. When more people want to buy than sell, the price goes up. When more want to sell, it goes down.
Asset. The thing being traded: a currency pair like EUR/USD, a crypto coin like Bitcoin, a company's shares, gold.
Currency pair. Forex is always traded in pairs. EUR/USD at 1.0850 means one euro costs 1.0850 US dollars. If you think the euro will strengthen, you buy the pair.
Spread. The small gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at. It's one of the ways a broker earns. Tight spreads mean cheaper trading.
Volatility. How much and how fast a price moves. Gold and crypto are usually more volatile than the big currency pairs.
Session. The busy hours of a market. Forex has three main sessions (Asia, London and New York), and the London–New York overlap is usually the busiest.
The chart
Candle (candlestick). One bar on the chart, showing where price opened, closed, and its highest and lowest points over a set time. A green candle closed higher than it opened. A red one closed lower.
Body and wick. The thick part of a candle is the body (open to close). The thin lines are the wicks, showing how far price reached before being pushed back.
Timeframe. How much time each candle covers: 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day. Zoom out to a bigger timeframe to see the trend, zoom in to time your entry.
Trend. The general direction. An uptrend makes higher highs and higher lows. A downtrend makes lower highs and lower lows.
Support. A price level where buying has stepped in before, like a floor.
Resistance. A price level where selling has stepped in before, like a ceiling.
Breakout and retest. Price breaks through a level, then comes back to test it from the other side. An old ceiling often becomes a new floor.
The trade
Long. Buying because you expect the price to rise.
Short. Selling because you expect the price to fall. Yes, you can profit when prices drop.
Entry. The price where you open the trade.
Stop loss (stop). The price where your trade closes automatically if you're wrong. It's what keeps a small loss small.
Target (take profit). The price where you plan to take your profit.
Trigger candle. The candle that confirms your idea at your level, such as a strong close or a long rejection wick. It's your signal to act.
Position size. How big your trade is: how many lots, coins or shares. You work it out from your stop and the amount you're willing to risk.
Lot. The unit for sizing forex and gold trades. A standard lot is 1.00, a mini lot 0.10, a micro lot 0.01.
Pip. The smallest usual move in a currency pair. For EUR/USD, a move from 1.0850 to 1.0851 is one pip.
Leverage. Borrowed buying power from your broker. It lets a small account open bigger positions, which magnifies wins and losses alike. Your stop and position size, not leverage, decide your risk.
Risk and results
Risk per trade. How much of your account you're willing to lose if the stop is hit. At Nfinity we use 1%.
R. One unit of risk, in money. If you risk €100 on a trade, 1R is €100. Results are measured in R so they compare fairly across any account size.
Reward-to-risk (R:R). How much you aim to make for what you risk. At 3:1 you aim for 3R, so risking €100 aims for €300.
Win rate. The share of trades that hit target. With a 3:1 ratio, you can be wrong more often than you're right and still grow.
Drawdown. How far your account has dropped from its highest point. Every trader has them. Small risk keeps them small.
Losing streak. Several losses in a row. They happen to every trader with an edge. A plan and small risk turn them into speed bumps.
Edge. A small, repeatable advantage that pays off over many trades, like a casino's.
Journal. Your record of every trade: the setup, the reason, the result and what you felt. It's how you prove your edge.
Accounts and brokers
Broker. The regulated company that holds your money and places your trades.
Live account. An account with real money. Start small: an amount you're comfortable learning with.
Demo account. Pretend money. Useful for learning where the buttons are, but it can't teach you how real decisions feel, which is why we start on a small live account.
Regulated. Licensed and supervised by a financial authority (for example the FCA in the UK or CySEC in Cyprus), with rules about how your money is kept.
Trading involves risk and you can lose money. Only trade with money you can afford to lose.
Ready to put it into practice?
The Academy turns this into short video lessons on real charts, with a quick check after each one.