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Veridian Signal · CodexSign in for ScholarThe Codex
Market terms in plain English, from Veridian Signal's Scholar.
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- 10b5-1 plan
- A pre-arranged trading plan insiders set up in advance; trades under it are scheduled, not fresh decisions.
- 12-1 momentum
- Price change over about a year, leaving out the most recent month.
A
- Advance / decline
- The count of rising stocks against falling ones.
- Ask
- The lowest price someone is currently willing to accept for a share. Also called the offer.
- ATR
- Average True Range: the typical size of a day's move, in dollars.
- Average volume
- Typical daily volume over a lookback window — the baseline RVOL compares against.
B
- Band
- The footer label on a Radar card, set by strength: Track, Watch, Candidate or High-end candidate.
- Benchmark
- The yardstick a result is compared against.
- Bid
- The highest price someone is currently willing to pay for a share.
- Breadth
- How many stocks take part in a move, not just how far the index moved.
- Bull / Bear
- The two sentences on a Tactical card: the strongest case for the name, and the strongest case against it.
C
- Call grading
- How a Radar call is scored: from the price when you called it to the week's close.
- Call record
- Your graded Radar calls, week by week, on your profile.
- Candlestick
- One bar showing a period's open, high, low and close.
- Catalyst
- A dated, verifiable event that gives a stock a reason to move.
- Central bank
- The institution that sets a country's interest rates and manages its money supply.
- Chasing
- Jumping into a move after it has already run, because it is running.
- Confidence score
- 0–100 for how strongly the available evidence agrees. Not a probability, and not a recommendation.
- Confirmation bias
- Seeking out what agrees with you, and discounting what doesn't.
- Congressional trade disclosure
- Reports members of Congress file on their trades — often weeks after the trade.
- Consensus estimate
- The average of analysts' forecasts for a number such as EPS or revenue.
- Corroboration
- Independent sources reporting the same event.
- CPI
- The Consumer Price Index — the main US measure of inflation, published monthly by the BLS.
- Crowd split
- The share of members calling a Radar name bullish versus bearish, shown with the vote count.
D
- Dilution
- New shares that shrink each existing share's slice of the company.
- Disconfirming evidence
- The fact that would change your mind, named before you decide.
- Dollar volume
- Shares traded times price — how much money changes hands.
E
- Earnings surprise
- The gap between a reported number and the consensus.
- EPS
- Earnings per share: a company's net income divided by its shares.
- Event risk
- The chance a scheduled, binary event — an FDA decision, a court ruling, an earnings report — goes the wrong way.
- Extension
- How far a price has stretched above its recent average.
F
- Factor
- A shared trait that moves groups of stocks together — size, style, or cyclical versus defensive.
- Flat call
- A call where the price moved less than the flat threshold either way. It earns nothing and costs nothing.
- FOMC
- The Federal Reserve committee that sets US short-term interest rates.
- Form 4
- The SEC filing insiders use to report trades in their own company's shares, due within two business days.
- Form 8-K
- The SEC filing a company uses to report a material event between its quarterly reports.
G
- Guidance
- A company's own forecast for the coming quarter or year.
H
- Herding
- Following the crowd because it is the crowd.
I
- Invalidation
- The condition that would prove the reason for an idea wrong.
J
- Jobs report
- The monthly BLS Employment Situation release: payrolls and the unemployment rate.
K
- Key driver
- The one piece of evidence that best explains why a name is on the Radar.
L
- Limit order
- An order to trade only at a set price or better.
- Liquidity
- How easily shares change hands without moving the price much.
- Luck versus skill
- Telling a good process from a good outcome.
M
- Macro calendar
- The dates of scheduled economic releases and central-bank meetings.
- Macro terminal
- Pulse's feed of economy-wide news: the Fed, inflation, jobs, growth.
- Margin
- The share of revenue a company keeps at a given stage — gross, operating or net.
- Market order
- An order to trade right away at the best available price.
- Market regime
- The kind of market you're in: Risk-On, Choppy / Consolidating, Volatile / Expansion, or Risk-Off.
- Material agreement (8-K Item 1.01)
- An 8-K item reporting a significant contract the company has signed.
- Median
- The middle value when results are lined up in order.
- Momentum
- The tendency of recent winners to keep outperforming for a while, and of laggards to keep lagging.
- Moving average
- The average closing price over a set number of recent sessions, recalculated every day.
O
- Oracle read
- VERA's on-demand read of any ticker: trend, volume, catalysts, risk flags and a confidence score.
- Order book
- The list of resting bids and asks at each price.
- Overhead supply
- Prior highs above the price, where earlier buyers may look to get out.
- Overtrading
- Trading more often than your process calls for.
P
- P/E ratio
- Share price divided by earnings per share.
- Position sizing
- Working out how many shares to trade from how much you're prepared to lose.
- Pre-market routine
- The same checks, in the same order, before the open.
- Publish gate
- The minimum source score a Pulse story needs before it appears.
- Pulse
- VERA's news engine: verified stories sorted into five terminals.
R
- Radar call
- A Tactical member's bullish or bearish vote on a Radar name, graded at the week's close.
- Radar Ledger
- The running record of every Radar name and how it moved against SPY afterward.
- Radar week
- Sunday selection, refreshes through the week, Friday receipts.
- Range
- A price moving between a ceiling and a floor without trending.
- Receipts
- Friday's grade of every Radar name against SPY, published whether the week went well or not.
- Regression to the mean
- Extreme results tend to be followed by more ordinary ones.
- Relative strength
- How one stock or sector moves compared with a benchmark.
- Resistance
- A price area where selling has repeatedly appeared.
- Revenge trading
- Trading to win back a loss — usually bigger and faster than planned.
- Risk (R)
- VERA's 0–100 composite of what could go wrong with a name. Higher is worse.
- Risk deduction
- Points taken off strength once the risk score passes a floor.
- Risk flag
- A specific warning on the Oracle read — a trading halt, dilution, withdrawn guidance, extension, thin liquidity, overhead supply.
- Risk per idea
- The most you're prepared to lose if one idea turns out wrong, decided before you start.
- Risk-on / risk-off
- Whether investors are reaching for risk or retreating from it.
- RSI
- Relative Strength Index: a 0–100 measure of recent up moves against down moves.
- RVOL (relative volume)
- Volume compared with its own normal level. 1.0 is normal; 2.0 is twice normal.
S
- Sample size
- How many results a figure rests on. Small samples swing on luck.
- Schedule 13D
- The SEC filing required when an investor takes more than 5% of a company with intent to influence it.
- Sector cap
- The limit on how many Radar names can come from one sector in a week.
- Sector rotation
- Leadership moving from one group of stocks to another.
- Sentiment
- The tone of recent news and discussion around a name. Context, not a trigger.
- Setup score
- The weighted blend of catalyst, confirmation, volume, technicals, follow-through and narrative.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you got.
- Source quality
- How trustworthy the best source behind a story is, from SEC filings down to social posts.
- Spread (bid–ask)
- The gap between the best bid and the best ask — the cost of trading immediately.
- SPY
- An exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 — the market's yardstick on Veridian Signal.
- Stop-loss order
- An order that triggers a sale if the price falls to a set level.
- Strength
- VERA's 0–100 score, from the setup, source quality and room versus risk, less a risk deduction.
- Strength ring
- The 0–100 ring on a Radar card: VERA's overall score for how strongly the evidence lines up.
- Subscores
- The five parts behind the Oracle confidence score: technicals, volume, sentiment, structure and macro.
- Summary bars
- The three five-segment meters on a Radar card: Technicals, Narrative and Risk.
- Support
- A price area where buyers have repeatedly stepped in.
T
- Timeframe
- The period each bar on a chart covers — a day, an hour, five minutes.
- Trade quality
- How easy a name is to trade: dollar volume, price level, and how evenly volume spreads through the day.
- Trading journal
- A written record of each idea: why, what would change your mind, and what happened.
- Trend
- A price path making higher highs and higher lows (an uptrend), or lower highs and lower lows (a downtrend).
- Trend band
- The coloured label at the top of a Radar card that names the chart's shape.
V
- VERA Radar
- The five names VERA publishes each week, with a card explaining the evidence behind each.
- VIX
- An index of the S&P 500 volatility options traders expect over the next 30 days.
- Volume
- How many shares traded in a period.
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price: the average price paid across a period, weighted by volume.
W
- Watchlist
- Your short list of names, each saved with a reason.
Educational content. Not investment advice.