Trading Glossary

Take a look at our list of the financial terms associated with trading and the markets.
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization

Refers to profits before deduction of interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization; It is another dimension of the company's operating performance that reflects the impact of capital structure and non-cash expenditures in the financial report analysis. Model valuations are commonly used for companies in the growth or recovery phase, and since such companies are often in a loss-making phase and are unable to use net profit modeling, EBITDA is used. 

Earnings Calendar

In the form of a calendar, it shows the time when each listed company in a market publishes its financial report. Since each company has a different time to release earnings, but most of them are one month after the end of the fiscal year, the earnings calendar can give investors a clear time to release their earnings. 

Earnings Per Share

Generally refers to the income brought to shareholders by each common stock in the public market when the company publishes its earnings report. It is calculated as net profit less special dividends/number of shares outstanding in common stock. EPS is an important tool for stock valuation and is intrinsically related to stock prices. In general, the higher the EPS, the higher the share price per share. The correlation between EPS and stock price is often described as a price-to-earnings ratio (PE ratio). 

Economists

Refers to students who study economics. Economics is the study of the correlation between economic activities in human society and the laws of development. Economists need to study not only the laws of economic activity, but also help institutions such as governments, central banks, or banks predict future economic development to help specify appropriate policies. 

Egyptian Pounds

The legal tender of Egypt, the code is EGP. 

El Salvador Colon

The legal tender of El Salvador up until 2001. The code is SVC. El Salvador was the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as a legal currency. 

Electronic Brokering Services

An electronic broker, or online broker, gets a quote of goods from a market maker or liquidity provider and matches the buying and selling contracts in the market through an online platform, like MT4. 

Electronic Direct Trading:

Refers to electronic traders trading directly with the underlying exchange without the involvement of a third party. Sometimes referred to as Straight Through Processing or Direct Market Access (DMA). 

Electronic Indirect Trading:

It means that a market maker or broker does not directly trade commodities or contracts through an electronic trading platform, but matches both buying and selling or long and short parties in the market. It also refers to the broker getting an electronic trading platform quote from the market maker and then matching it to the order demand. 

Electronic Market Maker

Refers to the institution that provides quotations on the electronic trading platform and continuously invests buy and sell orders into the market to provide direct liquidity for the market. 

Elliott Wave Theory

One of the main theories in technical analysis, proposed by the American accountant Eliot in 1938. It believes that the trend of market prices has a specific pattern, and group psychology is an important basis behind it. Wave theory, which predicts when a trend may end and when it may establish, is an existing predictive tool for price action planning. 

Emerging Market Currency Pairs

That is, a currency pair consisting of a major currency and the currencies of an emerging market or strong and small economy such as Hong Kong or Singapore from a global perspective, as well as the currencies of European countries outside the eurozone, such as usd/Turkish lira.  

Emerging Markets

It often refers to emerging economies or developing countries, which tend to invest more in productivity, and the economy is in a rapidly growing environment, with growth rates ahead of the world. Emerging markets tend to offer investors greater rates of return, but at the same time greater risk. 

Employment Change

Refers to the changes in a country's job market in the current month or quarter, and the total number of people employed minus the total number of unemployed people will get the change in net employment. A positive change in the number of people in employment indicates that the number of people gaining employment exceeds the number of unemployed, and conversely, if the number of unemployed is greater. Often, changes in the employment population can directly affect consumer spending, and the more employed people, the higher the total consumer spending in the country. 

End of Day Order

A type of order that refers to an instruction given by an investor to trade, which is valid until the end of the day's trading hours. 

Equity

Refers to the financial level that reflects the company's own capital, or the shareholders' ownership of the company's book value. Shareholders' rights are the remaining portion of the company's total assets after deducting liabilities. If the shareholders' equity is below zero, then the company is at risk of bankruptcy and its shares are worthless. 

Ethereum

Ether is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after Bitcoin. Ethereum is a decentralized, open source public blockchain platform with smart contract capabilities. Ethereum is the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum. The concept of Ethereum was first proposed in2013 and developed through crowdfunding in 2014.  

EUR

The legal tender of the eurozone is one of the eight major currencies. 

European Stability Mechanism

Approved at the 2011 EU Summit, it provided financial assistance to EU countries under the European debt crisis to ensure the stability of their national debt, with a total size of $700 billion. 

European Union

Refers to the political and economic alliance established by many European countries, which currently has 27 member countries and is called the third largest economy in the world. After Britain's departure from the EU, Germany and France were the two core countries of the EU. In the European Union, the monetary policy of member states is unified, but fiscal policy is still decided by the governments of each member state. 

Eurozone

The eurozone is not the EU, but is made up of 19 of the EU's 27 countries. These 19 countries uniformly use the euro as their national currency, while the other 8 use their own currencies. Countries such as France, Germany, Italy, etc. use the Euro, while Sweden uses the Swedish krona. 

Evening Doji Star

A reversal pattern in which the price has peaked and is the opposite of the morning star. The Evening Star is generally used as a bearish reversal pattern. You will see this at the potential top of a recent move higher and indicates the market could reverse. The body of this candle will be larger than the evening doji star.

Evening Doji star candlestick

The evening star candlestick pattern is one of the most recognizable patterns in technical analysis. It can be used to spot uptrends, downtrends, and for market timing. This appears at the top of a recent uptrend and the 1st candle is a bullish candle, the 2nd candle is a doji star and the 3rd candle is a bearish candlestick.  

Evening Star

A type of financial commodity. A bond is a financial contract issued to investors by the government, financial institutions, companies, and promises to pay interest at a certain interest rate and repay the principal on agreed terms and times. 

EVM

Ethereum Virtual Machine refers to the complete operating environment of Ethereum smart contracts.

Exchange Traded Fund

ETF index funds represent ownership of a basket of stocks. Buying and selling an ETF is equivalent to buying and selling an index of the basket of stocks it tracks, which is the same as the return of the index. ETFs combine the characteristics of closed-end funds and open-end funds, which can be traded independently in the open market and converted between ETFs and stocks through subscription and redemption. ETFs come with diversification to reduce investment risks. 

Existing Home Sales

Economic indicators, published monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau, are used to track the sales of existing (second-hand homes) across the United States. 80% of U.S. properties are built-ups, so the indicator is a good guide to financial markets. Existing home sales data is often used to gauge consumer spending in the United States, which also has an impact on the foreign exchange market. In general, higher than expected for existing home sales is positive for the US dollar.  

Expected Profit

The expected profitability of each trade. Expected Gain = Win Rate x Profit – Loss Rate x Loss – Cost. Unless it is for special hedging purposes, only trades with positive expected returns are generally used. Otherwise, you will lose money all the time. The so-called trading strategy is actually to achieve long-term positive expected returns through repeated strategy models. It can also be used to distinguish between gambling and speculation, the expected return of gambling is generally negative, while the expected return of speculation can be positive.  

Expiry Date

Refers to the date or last date on which an instrument option is granted exercise to the holder. In the case of a call option, for example, an instrument needs to be purchased at the strike price of the contract on or before the expiry date (for different types of options), and the power expires after the expiration date. 

Exponential Moving Average

One of the methods of calculation of moving averages is characterized by the idea that the closer you are to the current price, the higher the weight of the moving average value should be. Taking the five-day moving average as an example, the weight of the current price is 33.3%, which is different from the simple moving average of 20%. 

Export

A country exports locally produced physical goods or services to or from all parts of the world by ship, land, air, or online services. General export trade will trigger the appreciation of local currencies and the depreciation of foreign currencies.