Trading Glossary: Long, Short, Leverage, Funding, ATH, R:R...

Orders, perps, leverage, liquidation, funding, open interest, indicators, market cap, FDV, squeeze: the vocabulary of crypto trading explained without jargon.

Trading · Débutant + · 13 min read · Publié le October 13, 2026

The essentials

Markets

Spot: you buy the asset itself, paid in full. No liquidation possible.
CEX / DEX: centralized exchange (a company holds your funds) / decentralized exchange (smart contracts, you keep your keys).
Perp DEX: a decentralized exchange for perpetual contracts (Hyperliquid, Lighter...). See our Perp DEX hub.
Futures: a contract that bets on an asset's future price, with an expiry date.
Perpetual (perp): a future with no expiry, kept close to the spot price by the funding. See perps, leverage and funding.
Options: the right (not the obligation) to buy (call) or sell (put) at a set price. See crypto options.
Pair: the two assets traded (BTC/USDC). The first is the asset, the second the quote currency.

Positions

Long: betting on a rise.
Short: betting on a fall. You win if the price drops.
Leverage (2x, 10x, 50x...): multiplying the size of the position relative to the stake. Gains and losses are multiplied accordingly.
Margin: the stake locked as collateral. Isolated margin: the risk is limited to this position. Cross margin: the whole account balance serves as collateral. See margin and liquidation.
Liquidation: the forced closing of a position when the margin is no longer enough. Liquidation price: the price that triggers it.
Mark price: the reference price used to calculate losses and liquidations, harder to manipulate than the last traded price. Index price: the average of prices across several exchanges.
Funding rate: the periodic payment between longs and shorts that brings the perp's price closer to the spot price. Positive: longs pay shorts. On Hyperliquid, it's paid every hour.
Open interest (OI): the total value of open positions. An OI rising with the price signals new positions, not necessarily new spot buyers.
ADL (Auto-Deleveraging): when the insurance fund isn't enough, the exchange forcibly reduces winning positions.
Hedge: a position that protects another (a short to cover a spot holding).
Delta neutral: a combination of positions whose value doesn't move with the price (long on one platform, short on another). See delta-neutral between two Perp DEXs.
Basis / cash and carry: buying spot and shorting the future to capture the gap. See basis trade.

Orders

Market: executed immediately, at the available price.
Limit: executed only at your price or better.
Stop loss (SL): closes the position if the price reaches your loss threshold.
Take profit (TP): closes the position when the profit target is reached.
Stop-market / stop-limit: a stop that sends a market order (execution guaranteed, price not guaranteed) or a limit order (price guaranteed, execution not guaranteed).
Trailing stop: a stop that follows the price at a fixed distance.
Post-only: the order is canceled if it would execute immediately; it therefore stays a maker.
Reduce-only: the order can only reduce a position, never enlarge it.
GTC / IOC / FOK: Good Till Cancelled (stays until canceled) / Immediate Or Cancel (executes what can be filled, cancels the rest) / Fill Or Kill (all or nothing).
TWAP: a big order sliced into small pieces over a period of time.
Maker / taker: the maker adds an order to the book (lower fees); the taker takes an existing order. See orders and fees.
Fill / partial fill: full or partial execution.

The order book and liquidity

Order book: the list of pending buy and sell orders.
Bid / ask: the best buy price / the best sell price.
Spread: the gap between bid and ask. A wide spread is costly on every round trip.
Depth: the quantity available around the price. Little depth = large slippage.
Slippage: the gap between the expected price and the price obtained.
Market maker: a player who places orders on both sides to earn the spread. See market makers.
Liquidity: how easily you can buy or sell without moving the price.
Volume: the value traded over a period.
Wash trading: trades with yourself to inflate volume.
Spoofing: placing big orders you have no intention of filling, to deceive others.

Reading a chart

Candle (candlestick): the summary of a period: open, high, low, close (OHLC). See reading a chart.
Wick: the line above or below the candle, showing how far the price went.
Timeframe: the duration of a candle (1 min, 1 h, 1 day...).
Support / resistance: a zone where the price has often bounced / stalled.
Breakout / fakeout: exiting a zone that is confirmed / that fails and comes back.
Range: the price moves between two bounds.
Trend: the direction of the market. "The trend is your friend."
Indicators: RSI (relative strength; above 70 is called overbought, below 30 oversold), MACD (crossing of averages), SMA / EMA (simple / exponential moving averages), VWAP (volume-weighted average price), Bollinger bands (volatility), Fibonacci retracements (levels like 0.618). No indicator predicts the future.

Market moves

ATH / ATL (All-Time High / Low): the highest / lowest price ever.
Pump / dump: a sharp rise / a sharp fall.
Short squeeze: the rise forces shorts to buy back, which accelerates the rise. Long squeeze: the opposite.
Liquidation cascade: liquidations that trigger others, in a chain.
Stop hunt / liquidity grab: a quick wick that goes after the stops before heading back the other way.
Bull trap / bear trap: a false recovery / a false drop that traps those who follow it.
Dead cat bounce: a small technical rebound in the middle of a fall.
Contango / backwardation: futures trade above / below spot.
Volatility: the magnitude of price swings.
BTC dominance: bitcoin's share of the total crypto market cap.

Valuing a token

Market cap: price × circulating supply.
FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation): price × total supply, as if all tokens were already in circulation. A big gap between market cap and FDV signals future selling. See tokenomics, market cap, FDV.
Circulating / total / max supply: supply in circulation / supply created / maximum planned supply.
Unlock: the date when locked tokens (team, investors) become sellable.
Listing / delisting: a token's arrival on / removal from an exchange.

Results and risk management

PnL (Profit and Loss): gain or loss. Realized: closed position. Unrealized: position still open.
ROI / ROE: return on investment / on the margin committed (inflated by leverage).
Drawdown: the decline from the account's last high.
R:R (risk/reward): the ratio between what you risk and what you aim for. A 1:3 R:R risks 1 to aim for 3.
Position sizing: choosing the size of the position according to the acceptable loss (many traders limit risk to 1 or 2% of capital per trade).
DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging): investing a fixed amount at regular intervals. See DCA.
Scalping / day trading / swing trading: trades lasting a few minutes / within the day / over several days.
Backtest / paper trading: testing a strategy on the past / with fictional money.
Copy trading: automatically copying another trader's positions.
Prop firm: a firm that funds traders after a successful challenge, with maximum-loss rules. See how a crypto prop firm works and our crypto prop firm comparison.