● Free reference · 76 terms

Every market term,
explained in plain language.

Accelpix is an Authorised Data Vendor & Software Development Company

Technical analysis, fundamental analysis, options Greeks, risk management and personal finance — one searchable reference, linked to the free calculator that puts each concept to work.

Market & Trading Basics Technical Analysis Fundamental Analysis Derivatives & Options Risk & Money Management Personal Finance & Wealth

◉

Market & Trading Basics

Bid / Ask MARKET: The bid is the highest price a buyer is willing to pay; the ask (offer) is the lowest price a seller will accept. The gap between them is the bid-ask spread — tighter spreads mean a more liquid market.
Liquidity MARKET: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. High-liquidity instruments (index futures, large-cap stocks) fill orders near the quoted price; illiquid ones can slip badly.
Volume MARKET: The number of shares or contracts traded in a period. Rising price on rising volume is generally treated as a stronger, better-confirmed move than the same rise on thin volume.
Volatility MARKET: The degree to which price fluctuates. Historical volatility measures past movement; implied volatility (from option prices) reflects what the market expects ahead. Higher volatility means bigger swings — and wider stops.
Market Order vs Limit Order ORDERS: A market order executes immediately at the best available price; a limit order executes only at your specified price or better. Market orders guarantee execution, limit orders guarantee price.
Stop-Loss ORDERS: A pre-placed order that exits your position once price hits a level you chose, capping the loss on a trade. The distance between entry and stop is the input every position-sizing rule is built on.
Slippage ORDERS: The difference between the price you expected and the price you actually got, usually caused by fast markets or thin liquidity. Real trading results are always net of slippage and costs.
Long / Short POSITIONS: Going long means buying in expectation of a rise. Going short means selling first (borrowed stock or a derivative) to profit from a fall — with the risk that losses on a short are theoretically unlimited.
Leverage RISK: Controlling a large position with a smaller amount of capital, typically via margin or derivatives. Leverage multiplies both gains and losses — a 5× levered position turns a 2% adverse move into a 10% hit on capital.
Margin RISK: The collateral a broker or exchange requires you to hold against a leveraged position. In Indian F&O it combines SPAN (risk-based) and exposure margin.
Circuit Limits MARKET: Exchange-set daily price bands (e.g. 5%, 10%, 20%) beyond which a stock cannot trade for the session, designed to curb panic moves. Index-level circuit breakers can halt the whole market.
Settlement (T+1) MARKET: The process of exchanging securities for funds after a trade. Indian equities settle on a T+1 cycle — shares and money change hands one business day after the trade.

▲

Technical Analysis

Support & Resistance TA: Price zones where buying interest (support) or selling interest (resistance) has repeatedly halted a move. Breaks of these zones, especially on volume, are among the most-watched technical events.
Trend TA: The general direction of price: uptrends make higher highs and higher lows, downtrends the opposite, and sideways markets neither. “Trade with the trend” exists because fighting it has a poor base rate.
Moving Average (MA / EMA) TA: The average closing price over N periods, redrawn each bar. Simple MAs weight all bars equally; exponential MAs weight recent bars more. Crossovers (e.g. 50/200) are classic trend signals.
RSI (Relative Strength Index) TA: A 0–100 momentum oscillator comparing recent gains to losses. Readings above 70 are conventionally called overbought and below 30 oversold — though strong trends can stay “overbought” for a long time.
MACD TA: Moving Average Convergence Divergence: the gap between a fast and slow EMA, plotted with a signal line. Crossovers and divergences from price are used to read momentum shifts.
Bollinger Bands TA: A moving average with bands set a chosen number of standard deviations above and below. Band width expands with volatility; price touching a band is context, not an automatic signal.
Pivot Points TA: Reference levels (pivot, R1–R3, S1–S3) computed from the prior session's high, low and close. Widely used by intraday traders. Compute Classic, Fibonacci, Camarilla and Woodie variants with the free Pivot Point Calculator.
Fibonacci Retracement TA: Levels (23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8%…) measured from a swing high to a swing low, watched as potential pullback zones. Get exact levels from any swing with the Fibonacci Calculator.
Candlestick Patterns TA: Chart formations — doji, hammer, engulfing, etc. — that summarise the battle between buyers and sellers within one or a few bars. Best read in context of trend and level, not in isolation.
Breakout TA: A move through a defined support/resistance level or pattern boundary, often accompanied by a volume surge. False breakouts (price snapping back) are common enough that many traders wait for confirmation.
Divergence TA: When price makes a new high/low but an oscillator (RSI, MACD) does not, hinting the move is losing momentum. A warning flag rather than a standalone trade signal.
VWAP TA: Volume-Weighted Average Price: the average traded price weighted by volume, reset each session. Institutions benchmark executions against it; intraday traders treat it as a fair-value magnet.
Market Profile (TPO) TA: A charting method organising price by time spent at each level, revealing value areas and points of control. Available as a professional NinjaTrader 8 indicator in the Mirra Charts suite.
Order Flow / Footprint TA: Bar-by-bar analysis of executed buy vs sell volume at each price, exposing absorption and imbalance invisible on normal candles. A professional tool for reading aggression in real time.

Fundamental Analysis

EPS (Earnings Per Share) FA: Net profit divided by the number of outstanding shares — the profit each share “earned”. Growth in EPS over time is the bedrock of most long-term stock theses.
P/E Ratio FA: Price divided by EPS: how many rupees the market pays for one rupee of annual earnings. Useful mainly in comparison — against the company's own history, its sector, and its growth rate.
P/B Ratio FA: Price to book value: market price relative to net assets per share. Most meaningful for banks and asset-heavy businesses; less so for asset-light software or brands.
ROE (Return on Equity) FA: Net profit as a percentage of shareholders' equity — how efficiently the company turns owners' capital into profit. Consistently high ROE without high debt is a hallmark of quality.
ROCE FA: Return on Capital Employed: operating profit against total capital (equity + debt). Preferred over ROE when comparing companies with different debt levels.
Debt-to-Equity FA: Total borrowings divided by shareholders' equity. High leverage amplifies both growth and distress; what counts as “high” varies sharply by industry.
Operating Margin FA: Operating profit as a percentage of revenue — profitability of the core business before interest and tax. Expanding margins usually signal pricing power or cost discipline.
Free Cash Flow FA: Cash generated by operations minus capital expenditure — the cash truly available to shareholders. Earnings can be shaped by accounting; cash flow is harder to dress up.
Dividend Yield FA: Annual dividend per share divided by price, in percent. A yield far above peers can signal generosity — or a falling price warning of trouble.
Market Capitalisation FA: Share price × total shares outstanding: the market's total valuation of the company. Basis of large/mid/small-cap classification (and index inclusion).
Book Value FA: Total assets minus total liabilities — the accounting net worth of the company, often quoted per share.
Intrinsic Value FA: An estimate of what a business is truly worth based on its future cash flows, independent of the current market price. The gap between price and intrinsic value is the value investor's “margin of safety”.
Promoter Holding & Pledging FA: The stake held by founders/controlling shareholders. Rising promoter holding is generally read positively; heavily pledged (loan-collateralised) promoter shares are a well-known risk flag in Indian markets.
Bhavcopy FA: The exchange's official end-of-day file of every security's open, high, low, close and volume. The canonical source for verifying historical data quality.

Derivatives & Options

Futures Contract F&O: An agreement to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a set date, traded in standardised lots. Both parties carry obligation — unlike options, where only the seller does.
Call & Put Options F&O: A call gives the right (not obligation) to buy at the strike price; a put the right to sell. Buyers risk only the premium; sellers collect the premium but carry potentially large obligations. Model payoffs with the Option Profit Calculator.
Strike Price F&O: The fixed price at which an option can be exercised. Options are grouped as in-the-money (ITM), at-the-money (ATM) or out-of-the-money (OTM) relative to the spot price.
Premium F&O: The price of the option itself, made of intrinsic value (how far ITM it is) plus time value (everything else — volatility, time to expiry, rates).
Open Interest (OI) F&O: The number of contracts currently outstanding. Rising OI with rising price suggests fresh longs; OI concentrations at strikes are widely read as support/resistance in index options.
Lot Size F&O: The exchange-fixed number of shares per derivative contract. Position sizing in F&O must round to whole lots — the Position Size Calculator does this automatically.
Delta GREEKS: How much an option's price moves per 1-point move in the underlying (0–1 for calls, 0 to −1 for puts). Also read as a rough probability of expiring ITM. Compute all Greeks with the Options Greeks & IV Calculator.
Gamma GREEKS: The rate of change of delta itself. Highest for ATM options near expiry — which is why prices can move so violently on expiry day.
Theta GREEKS: Daily time decay: how much value an option loses each day, all else equal. Works against buyers and for sellers, accelerating as expiry approaches.
Vega GREEKS: Sensitivity to a 1-point change in implied volatility. Long options gain when IV rises; short options gain when it falls.
Implied Volatility (IV) GREEKS: The volatility level that makes the theoretical (Black-Scholes) price equal the market price — the market's forward-looking fear gauge, and the input solved by the IV solver in the Greeks calculator.
Straddle & Strangle STRATEGY: Buying both a call and a put (same strike = straddle, different strikes = strangle) to bet on a big move in either direction. Build and price these with the Options Strategy Builder.
Spreads (Bull/Bear) STRATEGY: Buying one option and selling another to cap both cost and profit — e.g. a bull call spread. Defined-risk structures favoured for directional views with less premium burn.
Iron Condor STRATEGY: Selling an OTM call spread and an OTM put spread together, profiting if price stays in a range. Limited profit, limited loss — a classic income structure in range-bound markets.
SPAN Margin F&O: The exchange's portfolio-level, risk-based margin computation for F&O positions, recalculated through the day. Estimate it (as an honest range) with the Margin Calculator.
Expiry F&O: The date a derivative contract ceases to exist and settles. Option time value goes to zero at expiry; weekly index expiries dominate Indian options volume.

◢

Risk & Money Management

Position Sizing RISK: Deciding how much to trade so a single stop-out costs only a fixed, small share of capital. Arguably the most important trading skill — automate it with the Position Size Calculator.
The 1–2% Rule RISK: Risking no more than 1–2% of trading capital on any single trade, so that even a long losing streak leaves you in the game. Ten straight 1% losses draw capital down ~9.6%, not 10% — and it's survivable.
Risk:Reward Ratio RISK: Potential profit relative to the amount risked. A 1:2 setup needs to win only ~34% of the time to break even — score any setup with the Risk:Reward Calculator.
Drawdown RISK: The peak-to-trough decline of an account or investment. A 50% drawdown needs a 100% gain to recover — the asymmetry that makes capital preservation rule number one.
Kelly Criterion RISK: A formula for the bet size that maximises long-run growth given your win rate and win/loss ratio. Full Kelly is aggressive; practitioners typically use a fraction of it.
Portfolio Heat RISK: The total percentage of capital at risk across all open positions at once. Capping heat (say at 6%) prevents several “small” risks from becoming one large one.
Hedging RISK: Taking an offsetting position (often via options or futures) to reduce exposure to an adverse move — paying a known cost to remove an unknown risk.
Diversification RISK: Spreading capital across assets whose returns don't move together, reducing the damage any single position can do. The only widely-agreed “free lunch” in finance.

∞

Personal Finance & Wealth

Compound Interest WEALTH: Earning returns on past returns. Over long horizons compounding dominates everything else — see it year by year with the Compound Interest Calculator.
SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) WEALTH: Investing a fixed amount at fixed intervals (usually monthly) into a fund, buying more units when prices are low and fewer when high. Project outcomes with the SIP Calculator or Step-up SIP Calculator.
Rupee-Cost Averaging WEALTH: The effect behind SIPs: regular fixed purchases average your entry price across market cycles, removing the need (and temptation) to time the market.
CAGR WEALTH: Compound Annual Growth Rate — the single smoothed yearly rate connecting a start value to an end value. The honest way to compare multi-year returns; compute it with the CAGR Calculator.
XIRR WEALTH: The annualised return of a series of irregular, dated cash flows — the correct measure for a real SIP or portfolio with deposits and withdrawals. The XIRR Calculator handles the dates for you.
Asset Allocation WEALTH: How capital is split across equity, debt, gold and cash. Long-run studies attribute most of a portfolio's behaviour to this split rather than to individual security selection.
Inflation WEALTH: The rate at which money loses purchasing power. A corpus that ignores inflation is an illusion — the Retirement Corpus Calculator builds it in.
EMI WEALTH: Equated Monthly Instalment: the fixed monthly payment on a loan, covering interest first and principal later. Simulate prepayments and payoff strategies with the Smart Loan Optimizer.
SWP WEALTH: Systematic Withdrawal Plan: drawing a fixed amount monthly from a corpus while the rest stays invested — the spending-phase mirror of a SIP. Test sustainability with the SWP Calculator.
STCG / LTCG WEALTH: Short-Term and Long-Term Capital Gains — taxed at different rates depending on holding period and asset class. Estimate equity taxes with the Capital Gains Tax Calculator.
Emergency Fund WEALTH: Three to six months of expenses kept in liquid, safe instruments before any market investing — the buffer that stops a bad month from forcing you to sell good investments at bad prices.
Nisab & Zakat WEALTH: In Islamic finance, nisab is the minimum wealth threshold above which zakat (2.5% annual charitable giving on qualifying wealth) is due. Compute it with the Zakat Calculator.

Every market term,explained in plain language.