Reference · Glossary
Every term, explained once.
Terms you'll see on the calendar, in the impact feed, and across the terminal. Short definitions. No filler. Updated as new vocabulary shows up in the product.
ASK BID BPS (Basis Points) CFD CONSENSUS CURVE DOT PLOT DXY FOMC HAWKISH / DOVISH LEVERAGE LOT MARGIN OHLCV OIS PIP SEP SLIPPAGE SPREAD SURPRISE TERMINAL RATE TICK TIER 1 / 2 / 3 YIELD
- ASK The lowest price a seller will accept right now.
- Also called OFFER. If you want to buy at market, you buy at the ASK. Always higher than the BID. Quotes display as BID / ASK — e.g. 1.0850 / 1.0852.
- BID The highest price a buyer will pay right now.
- If you want to sell a symbol at market, you sell at the BID. It's always lower than the ASK; the gap between them is the spread and is the cost of an instant fill.
- BPS (Basis Points) One-hundredth of a percent. 100 bps = 1%.
- Used for rate changes and yield moves. A 25 bps Fed hike is 0.25%. A 'bps' pronunciation: 'beeps' or spelled out. Used because small decimal percentages are error-prone when spoken.
- CFD Contract for Difference — a derivative that mirrors the price of an underlying asset.
- Popular retail instrument for trading stocks, indices, and commodities without owning the underlying. Broker pays/receives the price difference between open and close. Leveraged. Not available to US retail.
- CONSENSUS The median or mean forecast of surveyed economists for an upcoming data release.
- Bloomberg, Reuters, and Dow Jones publish consensus forecasts for every major release. Market reaction on release depends on the actual print relative to consensus, not the absolute level. Bloomberg consensus is the most-cited benchmark.
- CURVE The yield curve — yields across bond maturities plotted as a line.
- Normal curve: short yields < long yields (upward sloping). Flat: short ≈ long. Inverted: short > long, historically a recession signal. Steepening: long rising faster than short. Flattening: opposite.
- DOT PLOT The FOMC's anonymous chart of each member's rate projection.
- Each committee member marks their end-of-year federal funds rate forecast on a chart; the market watches the median. A dot plot shift of 25bp is meaningful; 50bp is a regime change. Published in the SEP.
- DXY US Dollar Index — a weighted measure of USD against six major currencies.
- Basket weights: EUR 57.6%, JPY 13.6%, GBP 11.9%, CAD 9.1%, SEK 4.2%, CHF 3.6%. DXY going up = USD strengthening broadly. Alternative broader measure is BBDXY (Bloomberg) which includes EM currencies.
- FOMC Federal Open Market Committee — the Fed's monetary policy committee.
- Meets eight times a year, decides the federal funds rate target, publishes the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) quarterly. The single most market-moving committee meeting in the global calendar.
- HAWKISH / DOVISH Central bank posture toward higher or lower interest rates.
- Hawkish = leaning toward tighter policy (higher rates, slower QE, faster QT). Dovish = leaning toward looser policy (lower rates, slower QT, dovish forward guidance). A 'hawkish hold' is a no-rate-change decision with hawkish statement language.
- LEVERAGE The ratio of position size to required margin.
- 50:1 leverage means 1 USD of margin supports 50 USD of position. Amplifies both gains and losses. Retail FX brokers in Indonesia commonly offer up to 500:1; regulated US brokers cap at 50:1. See also MARGIN
- LOT A standardised trade size. Varies by asset class.
- In FX: 1 standard lot = 100,000 units of the base currency. 0.1 = mini lot (10,000). 0.01 = micro lot (1,000). In equities: typically 100 shares = 1 lot. In futures: contract-defined.
- MARGIN The collateral a broker holds against your open positions.
- Leveraged trading uses margin — you put up a fraction of a position's notional value as collateral. Required margin = notional ÷ leverage. A margin call triggers when unrealised loss eats into your free margin buffer.
- OHLCV Open, High, Low, Close, Volume — the five numbers that define a candle or bar.
- Every chart aggregates tick data into OHLCV bars at a chosen interval (1m, 5m, 1h, 1d). Volume is trades executed in that interval. Trading Hub Terminal uses OHLCV for all candlestick and area charts in the Live Quote widget.
- OIS Overnight Indexed Swap — a derivative that prices expected future central bank rates.
- Traders read market-implied rate probabilities off the OIS curve. Example: the 1-month OIS rate for next month's ECB meeting tells you the consensus-implied rate decision. The CME FedWatch tool translates fed funds futures into the same shape for the FOMC. See also FOMC
- PIP Price Interest Point — the smallest standard price increment for a currency pair.
- For most pairs, a pip is the fourth decimal place (0.0001). For JPY pairs, a pip is the second decimal place (0.01). Brokers also quote pipettes (1/10 of a pip) for tighter pricing.
- SEP Summary of Economic Projections — the Fed's quarterly forecast document.
- Published at four of eight FOMC meetings (March, June, September, December). Includes the 'dot plot' of rate forecasts, GDP growth, unemployment, inflation projections. The median end-of-year dot is the most-watched number.
- SLIPPAGE The difference between the expected fill price and the actual fill price.
- Happens in fast markets and on news releases. Market orders are subject to slippage; limit orders are not (but may not fill). Wide-spread volatile instruments slip more. See also SPREAD
- SPREAD The gap between BID and ASK, expressed in ticks or pips.
- The spread is the round-trip cost of an instant position. EURUSD with a 0.2 pip spread costs 0.2 pips to open and close on market orders. Majors trade tighter spreads than exotics; news events widen spreads.
- SURPRISE The delta between actual and consensus on a data release.
- A 'positive surprise' means actual beat consensus; negative surprise means it missed. Magnitude of surprise drives the size of the initial market reaction. Large surprises (>1 standard deviation) tend to extend for 30-60 minutes; small surprises fade within 10. See also CONSENSUS
- TERMINAL RATE The final interest rate level at which a central bank stops hiking or cutting.
- Market-implied terminal rate is derived from the fed funds futures strip. Moves in the terminal rate reprice the entire yield curve, especially the 2-year. Often more impactful than the next meeting's decision. See also FOMC
- TICK The smallest possible price movement of an instrument.
- A tick is the minimum price increment defined by the exchange or broker. ES futures tick is 0.25 index points = USD 12.50 per contract. A pip in FX is a specific type of tick for currency pairs. See also PIP
- TIER 1 / 2 / 3 Trading Hub Terminal's impact score for economic events and news.
- Tier 1 = market-moving: CPI, NFP, FOMC rate decisions, major central bank meetings. Tier 2 = notable: regional PMIs, second-tier inflation prints, scheduled speeches by FOMC voters. Tier 3 = context: routine data, non-voting speakers, ancillary releases. Terminal filters default to Tier 1+2.
- YIELD The interest rate a bond pays relative to its current market price.
- Price and yield move inversely. A 10-year Treasury yielding 4.5% trades near par; a drop in price lifts yield above 4.5% and vice versa. Short-end yields (2Y) reflect Fed policy expectations; long-end (10Y, 30Y) reflect term premium and inflation expectations.