Every term used in this manual, plain-English. The terms are grouped by theme — instruments, VWAP & levels, the opening range, volume profile, the setups, and the data/risk/prop layer. When a later module leans on a word, this is where it's defined.
Futures contract — a standardized, exchange-traded agreement to buy/sell an asset at a future date. We trade index futures and never intend delivery; we're in and out intraday.
ES — E-mini S&P 500 future. The primary instrument (deepest, cleanest, best opening-range behavior).
NQ — E-mini Nasdaq-100 future. Trends harder; preferred for Break & Retest.
YM — E-mini Dow future. A third confirmation index.
MES / MNQ / MYM — the micro versions (1/10 the size of the mini). Used to trade smaller and to scale out granularly.
Tick — the minimum price increment. ES moves in 0.25-point ticks; each ES tick = $12.50, so 1 ES point = $50. A micro (MES) tick = $1.25, so 1 MES point = $5.
Front month — the contract with the most volume (the one you actually trade); roll to the next before expiry. Never trade the thin, far-dated months.
RTH / ETH — Regular Trading Hours (9:30 AM–4:00 PM ET) vs Electronic Trading Hours (the overnight/Globex session). We chart ETH for the full overnight view, and trade primarily during RTH (the overnight/Asia session is a secondary playbook).
Multiplier & notional — each contract is worth a fixed multiplier × the index (1 ES = $50 × the S&P). At S&P 5,000, one ES represents ~$250,000 of exposure (its notional value), controlled with only a few thousand — intraday, a few hundred — dollars of margin.
Cash settlement — index futures never deliver shares; at expiry a position is squared against the index's final value in cash. (Commodity futures can be physically delivered; index futures can't.)
Contract month & expiry — index futures list on the quarterly cycle (H=Mar, M=Jun, U=Sep, Z=Dec) and expire the third Friday, cash-settling to the SOQ (Special Opening Quotation). A symbol is root+month+year — ESZ5 = ES, Dec 2025.
Roll — moving from the expiring front month to the next contract (~8 days before expiry, when volume migrates). Roll by volume, not by the calendar.
Continuous contract / back-adjustment ("b-adj") — a chart stitched across rolls. Unadjusted keeps real prices but gaps at each roll; back-adjusted shifts old data for a smooth line but offsets history. Trade off real front-month prices; use back-adjusted only for higher-timeframe context (Module 02 §2.3).
Long / short — buy to profit if price rises (long) or sell first to profit if it falls (short). Futures short as easily as they buy — no borrow, no uptick rule.
VWAP — Volume-Weighted Average Price: the average price weighted by volume from a chosen anchor point. Above it, buyers are in control; below it, sellers. The day's line of control.
Anchor — the point a VWAP starts from. See the anchor taxonomy in Module 03.
NY VWAP — VWAP anchored to today's 9:30 AM open. The decision line.
Overnight / Daily VWAP — anchored to the 6:00 PM ET prior-day Globex open. The overall-trend filter.
Previous-day (PD) VWAP — anchored to yesterday's 9:30 open.
Start-of-week VWAP — anchored to the Sunday 6:00 PM ET weekly open, used Tue–Fri. The slow weekly governor: while price is above the three fast VWAPs (NY / overnight / previous-day) but still below the weekly VWAP, up-day conviction is capped (~71% → ~59%). Weekly context, not a trigger.
VWAP alignment / the stack — NY, Overnight, and Previous-day VWAPs all sloping and stacked the same way. Full alignment up = longs only; down = shorts only; mixed = stand aside.
VWAP slope — the tilt of the line. A flat/horizontal VWAP = no trend = no trade. The NY (intraday) slope is a genuine directional read (~63–65%); the pre-open overnight slope measured a near-coin-flip, so treat it as context only. Slope is rate-of-change: steepest early, flattening as the day fills in; a flattening line = value being accepted = a tiring trend. (📖 Shannon.)
Anchored VWAP / handoff VWAP — a VWAP re-anchored to a significant point (a session high/low, a news release, the last VWAP touch on a one-way day) to read control from that event forward. Best anchored to a high-volume event (~1.5× normal) where price memory concentrates — a gap, a release, the HOD/LOD. (📖 Shannon, ch. 4.)
Porosity — the idea (Paul Levine, via 📖 Shannon) that a VWAP is a zone, not a hairline: expect a few ticks of overshoot on a touch. Why a wick through VWAP isn't a break (you need a 1-min close) and why stops sit below the wick, not on the line.
The flip (support↔resistance at the VWAP) — a broken VWAP support becomes resistance, and a reclaimed resistance becomes support, at the line itself. The mechanism under the Double-Break reclaim and the retest. Shannon's failed-reclaim shorthand: "tap and crap." (📖)
AVWAP Pinch (Shannon's) vs "pinched" (ours) — different constructs, not opposite advice. Shannon's AVWAP Pinch (📖) is a coil of two price-anchored VWAPs (swing high + swing low). This manual's "pinched" means the three time-based VWAPs losing alignment (stand aside). Both say the same thing about the coil: don't trade inside it — wait for the break.
VWAP magnet — price returns to a VWAP (especially the overnight) frequently — a strong, reliable target (📊 the overnight line is revisited ~81% of RTH days as a fixed level, ~92% live). Note the direction, though: the longer / farther price has held away, the less likely a near-term revert (that's trend, not a stretched rubber band) — so it's a target to lean on, not a fade of a still-aligned move. (R3.7.)
Daily Bias Engine — the routine for forming a directional lean pre-open (regime → VWAP alignment → odds) and updating it intraday as each new candle confirms, downgrades, or flips it. (Module 04.7, R4.3.)
Opening Range (OR) — the high and low of the first 15 minutes (9:30–9:45 ET). The day's battlefield; its width sizes the trade.
OR width — the point distance between OR high and OR low. Wide = size down (bigger dollar stop) — but a wide, clean range is a more directional day, not a worse one; tight = a smaller stop, so size up.
Session extreme — the highest high / lowest low of the day so far. Where the real stop lives.
2-Candle Rule — the objective way to draw any key level: find the extreme (the wick) whose two candles on each side don't exceed it; draw the zone from body-end to wick-end. (Module 04.)
Double level — two references stacked within a few points (e.g., OR low + Overnight VWAP). The strongest structure for stops and targets.
Yesterday's high / low — the directional gate: no shorts unless below yesterday's low; no fresh longs above yesterday's high (long-or-flat at all-time highs).
Morning candle (6–10 AM ET) — the 4-hour bar covering 06:00–10:00 ET (London + NY pre-market + the first 30 min of the open). The earliest pre-open bias: a bullish close → long lean for the RTH day, bearish → short, two-sided → no help (RTH follows it ~61%; defer to the 9:30–10 opening candle on conflict). As a 4-hour IB, its range single-breaks ~80% within 10 AM–2 PM and the candle's color picks the side. A bias/structure read, never a trigger — and it does not forecast the next candle's color.
Candle cleanliness — how much of a candle is body vs wick, measured as body ÷ total range. The master direction filter for the 9:30–10 opening candle: a clean candle (body ÷ range > ~0.66) → the day closes that color ~77–81%; a wicky one (lots of wick) → ~53%, a coin flip. Cleanliness beats raw color — a wicky / ambiguous open is a wait & confirm, not a signal.
The confluence overlay.
Volume Profile — a histogram showing how much volume traded at each price (vs. over time). Reveals where the market found fair value.
POC (Point of Control) — the single price with the most traded volume. The most important profile level.
VAH / VAL (Value Area High / Low) — the top and bottom of the price range that held the bulk of the volume.
Session Volume Profile (SVP) — the profile tool we use, read on the 30-minute timeframe, plotting the previous day's POC/VAH/VAL as horizontal levels.
Golden rule (volume-profile bias) — above the prior-day POC, keep a long bias; below it, a short bias. An at-the-level intraday filter, not a trigger — where price opens relative to prior value does not, by itself, forecast the day's direction.
Mean-reversion tip (untouched POC) — targeting the prior-day POC as a mean-reversion target, valid only if price hasn't yet touched that POC earlier in the day.
Initial Balance (IB) — the first hour's range (a market-profile concept). Once the IB high breaks, the low of the day is usually already in — a measured lean (~70–77%, edgeful; CIs > 50%); a directional bias, not a standalone entry.
Double Break — the core trade: the first OR break is the trap; you enter on the reversal back through NY VWAP. (Module 05.)
Break & Retest — the trending-day companion: price breaks out with VWAP and you enter the retest of VWAP. (Module 05.)
VWAP Bounce — enter on a defended bounce off the VWAP (earliest, best price).
HOD/LOD anchored-VWAP trade (formerly "VWAP Break") — a VWAP anchored to a significant new high/low, traded two ways: the strong break (continuation, ≥50% of the 1-min body) and the bounce off it as support/resistance. Only take breaks preceded by a bounce; skip lonely ones far from a level. (Module 05.)
Mid-range / continuation — a lower-probability trade inside the OR (a VWAP reclaim or bounce with alignment). Hard exit on the first opposite-OR-extreme break regardless of R; size down, evals only. (Module 05.5.)
Reversion — the rare, advanced counter-trend fade back to a VWAP — only when already green on the day. (Module 05.6.)
Quad break — price sawing across both OR edges repeatedly; it disqualifies a clean double break → skip.
Donut — a would-be winner let to round-trip back to zero (from moving the stop to break-even / not banking the base hit). What the mid-range hard-exit rule prevents.
Trigger spectrum — the same trade entered at three confidence levels: Bounce (early) → close-through (standard) → break/retest (confirmed).
Base hit — a small, high-probability target-to-structure win. The bread and butter; you stack base hits rather than swing for home runs.
edgeful — the market-probability platform used for the statistical layer (completion rates, opening-candle color, weekday, OR-width, yesterday's-level odds). Used to grade and filter — never as an entry trigger.
Completion rate — how often the double-break pattern actually reaches its target (the opposite OR side). Regime-dependent; the size dial.
Grade (A / B / Skip) — the sizing rule: A = full, B = half, Skip = none (Module 07).
Dollar-risk-first — decide the dollars you'll risk → place the stop where the idea is invalid → let the contract calculator set the contract count. Never widen a stop to fit a size.
Margin — the deposit to hold a contract — not your risk. Initial / maintenance margin apply to overnight positions; a far lower day-trading margin applies intraday. Your risk is contracts × stop × $/point, independent of the margin posted.
Commission & spread — the cost of a trade: a small per-contract commission (round-turn) + tiny exchange fees, plus the ~1-tick spread. Futures carry no overnight swap (unlike forex) — the cost of carry is already in the price.
Margin call / stop-out — if losses eat into your margin the broker warns (call) and, if it worsens, force-closes positions (stop-out). Dollar-risk-first keeps you nowhere near it.
Prop firm / evaluation / instant-funded account — third-party firms that fund traders. You pass an evaluation (or buy instant funding), trade their capital, and take payouts. The payout meta-game is the income engine (Module 09).
Drawdown buffer — the cushion between your balance and the account's blow-up level. Protecting it is the whole game.
Copy-trading — mirroring one master account's fills across several funded accounts to multiply payouts.
The pre-trade checklist, the decision tree, the report card and the one-page cheat sheet — everything you keep open while you trade.
The whole method condensed to a single scannable page — thesis, instruments, window, the three VWAPs, break rules, setups, stops, targets and risk.