> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.askfutures.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Glossary

> Plain-English definitions of the futures and AskFutures terms you'll meet — plus the handful of words that mean more than one thing.

A quick reference for the words that show up across AskFutures and the concept
pages. Each entry is one or two sentences. If a term means several different
things depending on context, jump to [Overloaded terms](#overloaded-terms) — we
keep those straight for you.

<Info>
  Past performance does not guarantee future results. Always test before you trade.
</Info>

## A–Z

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="ATR (Average True Range)" icon="ruler-vertical">
    An indicator that measures how much a market typically moves in a bar. It's
    most often used to size stops and targets so they adapt to volatility — a
    wider stop in a busy market, a tighter one in a quiet one.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Artifact" icon="box-archive">
    A saved version of your strategy. Every edit produces a new artifact, so your
    history is preserved and you can [compare versions](/guides/version-and-compare).
    See [sessions, versions and artifacts](/concepts/sessions-versions-artifacts).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Backtest" icon="chart-line">
    A bar-by-bar replay of your strategy's exact rules over real historical
    prices, reporting how it would have performed. It's run by fixed,
    deterministic code — not the AI — so the same rules and data always produce
    the same numbers. See [is the backtest real?](/concepts/is-the-backtest-real).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Continuous contract" icon="link">
    A single, gapless price history stitched together from a market's individual
    expiring contracts, so you can test years of data without the contract
    changing under you. AskFutures uses back-adjusted continuous contracts. See
    [futures and symbols](/concepts/futures-and-symbols).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Commission" icon="receipt">
    The modeled per-trade broker cost subtracted from your results. Defaults are
    **$1/side** for micros and **$2.50/side** for full-size contracts; you can
    change them when you build or refine a strategy.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Crossover" icon="xmark">
    The moment one line crosses another — for example a fast moving average
    crossing above a slow one, a classic entry trigger. A "cross above" and a
    "cross below" are distinct events.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Drawdown" icon="arrow-trend-down">
    The drop from a peak in your equity to the lowest point before a new peak —
    the deepest "underwater" stretch a strategy put you through. Maximum drawdown
    is a key measure of how much pain a strategy demanded.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Entry rule" icon="right-to-bracket">
    The condition that opens a position. **Buy** opens a long; **sell short**
    opens a short. A strategy can be long-only, short-only, or both. See
    [strategies](/concepts/strategies).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="EOD (end-of-day) exit" icon="moon">
    An exit that flattens any open position before the session closes, so nothing
    is held overnight. It's the default exit for day-trading ideas. See
    [risk & trade management](/concepts/risk-and-trade-management).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Exit rule" icon="right-from-bracket">
    How a trade gets closed — either a *conditional exit* (close when a condition
    is true) or a *structured exit* (a stop, target, trailing stop, max-time, or
    end-of-day close). See [risk & trade management](/concepts/risk-and-trade-management).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Filter" icon="filter">
    A condition that thins out trades without changing the entry idea — for
    example "only between 9:30 and 11:00" or "first trade of the day." See
    [strategies](/concepts/strategies).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Indicator" icon="wave-square">
    A calculation derived from price or volume — RSI, EMA, MACD, ATR, Bollinger
    Bands, and so on. In AskFutures these are real [TA-Lib](https://ta-lib.org/)
    functions, not approximations. See [signals, indicators and series](/concepts/signals-indicators-series).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Margin" icon="hand-holding-dollar">
    The deposit your broker requires to hold a futures position. It sets how much
    capital a contract ties up; it is not the most you can lose.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Micro" icon="down-left-and-up-right-to-center">
    A smaller-sized version of a popular futures contract (for example Micro
    E-mini Nasdaq, `MNQ`) worth a fraction of the full-size product — cheaper to
    trade and the usual starting point for testing ideas.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Opening range" icon="bars-staggered">
    The high and low established in the first stretch of the session (say the
    first 15 minutes). Breakouts above or below it are a common entry idea. See
    [signals, indicators and series](/concepts/signals-indicators-series).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Optimization" icon="sliders">
    Searching across parameter values to see which settings would have performed
    best over the test window. AskFutures runs every combination through the same
    deterministic backtest. See [optimization](/concepts/optimization).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Overfitting" icon="mountain">
    Tuning a strategy so tightly to past data that it fits the noise instead of
    the behavior — it scores well on the tested window and falls apart on new
    data. The tell is sensitivity: only one exact parameter value works. See
    [overfitting vs. optimization](/concepts/overfitting-vs-optimization).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Parameter" icon="sliders-up">
    A named, tunable number in a strategy — like a moving-average length or a
    stop size. Parameters are what you (or the optimizer) sweep. See
    [strategies](/concepts/strategies).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Point value" icon="dollar-sign">
    How much one full point of price movement is worth in dollars for a given
    contract. Together with [tick value](#a-z), it converts price moves into P\&L.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Profit factor" icon="scale-balanced">
    Gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1.0 means the winners outweighed
    the losers over the test window; the higher, the more cushion. See the
    [metrics glossary](/reference/metrics-glossary).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Roll" icon="rotate">
    The switch from an expiring contract to the next one. Continuous contracts
    handle the roll for you so your test history stays gapless. See
    [futures and symbols](/concepts/futures-and-symbols).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Session" icon="clock">
    The trading hours of a market on a given day. Many intraday ideas anchor to
    the session — the opening range, end-of-day exits, and time-of-day filters
    all reference it. See [timeframes, bars and sessions](/concepts/timeframes-bars-sessions).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Slippage" icon="arrows-left-right">
    The modeled gap between the price you'd want and the price you'd realistically
    get. The default is **1 tick** per trade and is subtracted from results.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Stop (stop-loss)" icon="hand">
    A protective exit that closes a losing trade once price moves against you by a
    set amount. See [risk & trade management](/concepts/risk-and-trade-management).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Sweep" icon="grip-lines">
    One pass of the [optimizer](/concepts/optimization) across a range of
    parameter values — for example testing stop sizes from 200 to 600 in steps of
    50\.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Symbol" icon="tag">
    The short code for a futures market, like `MNQ` (Micro E-mini Nasdaq) or `CL`
    (Crude Oil). AskFutures covers \~74 CME Group symbols. See
    [futures and symbols](/concepts/futures-and-symbols) and the
    [supported symbols](/reference/supported-symbols) list.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Target (take-profit)" icon="bullseye">
    A structured exit that closes a winning trade once price reaches a set profit.
    See [risk & trade management](/concepts/risk-and-trade-management).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Tick" icon="stairs">
    The smallest price increment a contract can move. Prices step by whole ticks,
    never between them.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Tick value" icon="coins">
    The dollar value of one tick for a contract — the building block for turning
    a price move into profit or loss.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Trailing stop" icon="arrow-right-to-bracket">
    A stop that follows price in your favor, locking in gains as the trade works
    and never moving backward. See [risk & trade management](/concepts/risk-and-trade-management).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="VWAP (Volume-Weighted Average Price)" icon="chart-area">
    The average price over the session weighted by volume — a common reference
    line for whether price is rich or cheap intraday. See
    [signals, indicators and series](/concepts/signals-indicators-series).
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Overloaded terms

A few words get reused for genuinely different things. Here's how to read each
one, depending on where you see it.

<Warning>
  When the same word means several things, context decides. The table below maps
  each meaning so the numbers and rules never blur together.
</Warning>

| Term                  | Meaning A                                                                    | Meaning B                                                                                  | Meaning C                                             |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| **Signal**            | A rule *firing* — an entry or exit triggers on a bar.                        | The per-bar *signal data* a backtest records under the hood.                               | The predicted *trigger price* for a pending entry.    |
| **Point**             | A *price point* — one full unit of price movement (see [point value](#a-z)). | An *indicator period* — the number of bars a calculation spans (e.g. a 14-point RSI).      | —                                                     |
| **Day**               | *DAY data* — daily bars, one per session.                                    | *Day Trading* — a strategy type that opens and closes within the session.                  | The *day session* — a market's regular trading hours. |
| **Lookback / period** | The *test window* — how far back a backtest reaches (e.g. the last 1 year).  | An *indicator length* — how many bars an indicator averages over.                          | —                                                     |
| **Version**           | A *strategy version* — a saved [artifact](#a-z) in your edit history.        | An *internal schema version* — the plumbing format of the saved plan, which you never see. | —                                                     |

### Signal

The most overloaded of all. Three readings:

* **A rule firing.** The entry or exit condition becomes true on a bar and a
  trade is opened or closed. This is what traders usually mean.
* **Per-bar signal data.** Behind the scenes, a backtest records what each rule
  evaluated to on every bar — used to draw the [Strategy Flow](/concepts/strategies)
  and verify the run.
* **A predicted trigger price.** For a pending entry (say a breakout above a
  level), the price the rule is waiting for.

### Point

* **Price point** — one full unit of price movement; its dollar worth is the
  [point value](#a-z).
* **Indicator period** — the count of bars a calculation looks at. "A 14-point
  RSI" means RSI over 14 bars, not 14 dollars.

### Day

* **DAY data** — daily bars, one per session, used for longer-horizon ideas.
* **Day Trading** — a strategy *type* that opens and closes positions within the
  same session and is flat overnight (the default type, on 1-minute bars).
* **Day session** — a market's regular trading hours, which intraday rules anchor
  to. See [timeframes, bars and sessions](/concepts/timeframes-bars-sessions).

### Lookback / period

* **Test window** — how far back the backtest runs (the default is the last
  1 year). Phrased as "lookback" or "since 2020."
* **Indicator length** — how many bars an indicator averages over, like a
  20-period moving average. Often also called a "period."

### Version

* **Strategy version** — a saved [artifact](#a-z) in your non-destructive edit
  history; every refinement adds one. See
  [sessions, versions and artifacts](/concepts/sessions-versions-artifacts).
* **Internal schema version** — the technical format of the saved plan. It's
  plumbing you never see and shouldn't confuse with your strategy's version
  number.

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Strategies" icon="diagram-project" href="/concepts/strategies" />

  <Card title="Is the backtest real?" icon="shield-check" href="/concepts/is-the-backtest-real" />

  <Card title="Metrics glossary" icon="ruler" href="/reference/metrics-glossary" />

  <Card title="Concepts overview" icon="map" href="/concepts/overview" />
</CardGroup>