Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the trading, market, and wallet terms used across Minara. Written for anyone new to trading.
New here? Skim Trading basics and Margin, leverage & liquidation first. Those two cover most of what you need before your first trade.
Trading basics
Position
Your active trade on an asset. Opening a position starts the trade; closing it ends the trade and settles your gain or loss.
Long
A bet that a price will go up. You profit if the asset rises after you enter.
Short
A bet that a price will go down. You profit if the asset falls. On Minara you can short an asset without owning it first.
Entry / exit
The price at which you open a position (entry) and the price at which you close it (exit).
Spot
Buying the actual asset and owning it outright. The opposite of a derivative like a perpetual.
Volatility
How much and how fast a price moves. High volatility means larger, quicker swings in both directions.
P&L (profit and loss)
How much you have gained or lost on a trade.
Unrealized P&L
The gain or loss on a position you still hold. It moves with the price and is not locked in yet.
Realized P&L
The gain or loss that is locked in once you close a position.
Equity
The total current value of your account: your cash plus the unrealized P&L of any open positions.
Drawdown
A drop from a recent peak in your account value.
Max drawdown
The largest peak-to-trough drop over a period. A measure of worst-case loss.
Perpetuals & contracts
Derivative
A contract whose price tracks another asset, instead of the asset itself.
Futures
A contract to trade an asset at a set price. Traditional futures expire on a fixed date.
Perpetual (perp)
A futures contract with no expiry date. You can hold it as long as you want. Minara trades crypto, stocks, and commodities as perpetuals.
Funding rate
A small recurring payment between long and short holders that keeps a perpetual's price near the real asset price. When positive, longs pay shorts; when negative, shorts pay longs.
Open interest
The total number of open positions in a market. Rising open interest means more money is flowing in.
Tokenized stock
A perpetual that tracks a stock's price, such as AAPL or TSLA. You trade the price movement but do not own real shares, dividends, or voting rights.
Altcoin
Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.
Margin, leverage & liquidation
Margin
The money you put up as collateral to open a leveraged position.
Collateral
Funds set aside to back a position. On Minara this is USDC.
Leverage
Trading with more size than your own funds, shown as a multiple like 10x. It multiplies both gains and losses: at 10x, a 1% price move becomes a 10% move on your margin.
Initial margin
The amount needed to open a position. Higher leverage means less initial margin for the same position size.
Maintenance margin
The minimum equity needed to keep a position open. Fall below it and the position is liquidated.
Margin ratio
How close a position is to liquidation. As the market moves against you, this ratio worsens.
Cross margin
All your funds back all your positions together. Minara's default. Spare balance can absorb a loss before liquidation, but a loss on one trade reduces the margin available to the others.
Isolated margin
Margin is locked to one position. A loss can only liquidate that position, without touching the rest of your balance.
Liquidation
When your equity falls below the maintenance margin, the system force-closes your position to stop your balance going negative. You cannot undo it.
Liquidation price
The asset price at which your position gets liquidated. Higher leverage moves this price closer to your entry.
Auto-deleveraging (ADL)
A rare last-resort backstop. In extreme moves with too little liquidity, the exchange closes some profitable traders' positions to cover liquidations.
Orders
Order book
The live list of buy and sell orders for an asset. Its depth shows how much can be traded at each price.
Market order
Buys or sells right now at the best available price. Fast, but the exact price depends on what is available.
Limit order
An order to trade only at a price you set or better. It may not fill if the market never reaches your price.
Trigger order
An order that waits until the price hits a level you choose, then fires.
Stop trigger
A trigger that fires a market order when price crosses a threshold. Used for stop-losses. There is no guaranteed fill price.
Limit trigger
A trigger that places a limit order once the level is reached.
Take-profit (TP)
An order that closes your position automatically once it reaches a profit target.
Stop-loss (SL)
An order that closes your position automatically once a loss reaches a level you set, to cap the damage.
Trailing stop
A stop-loss that moves with the price as a trade works in your favor, locking in more of the gain.
Reduce only
A setting so an order can only shrink an existing position, never grow it or flip its direction.
Post only
A setting that keeps your order a maker order. If it would fill immediately as a taker, it is cancelled instead.
Fees & execution
Maker
An order that adds to the order book and waits, usually a limit order. Maker fees are lower.
Taker
An order that fills immediately against existing orders, such as a market order. Taker fees are higher.
Slippage
The gap between the price you expected and the price you actually got. Larger in fast-moving or thin markets.
Notional / position size
The full value of your position, including the part funded by leverage. $1,000 of margin at 10x controls a $10,000 notional position.
Spread
The gap between the highest price buyers offer and the lowest price sellers ask.
Counterparty
The party on the other side of your trade. Minara is never your counterparty: trades fill against real market participants on-chain.
Prediction markets
Prediction market
A market where you bet Yes or No on whether an event will happen, such as "Will BTC be above $80,000 at 2pm?"
Binary outcome contract
A contract with only two results. The winning side pays $1.00 per share; the losing side pays $0.
Implied probability
The chance the market is pricing in for an outcome. A Yes share priced at $0.65 means the market sees a 65% chance.
Settlement
When a contract ends and pays out based on the actual result.
Edge
The gap between Minara AI's estimated probability and the market's price. Positive edge means the AI sees value the market has not priced in.
Expected value (EV)
The average result of a bet if you repeated it many times. A positive-EV trade is statistically worth taking, though any single trade can still lose.
Strategy & metrics
Backtest
Running a strategy against past market data to see how it would have performed. Strong past results do not guarantee future ones.
Paper trading
Testing a strategy live with fake money, so no real capital is at risk.
Total return
The overall percentage gain or loss over a period.
Win rate
The share of trades that closed in profit.
Profit factor
Total profit divided by total loss. Above 1.0 means the strategy made money overall.
Sharpe ratio
Return measured against risk. Higher is better; above 1.0 is generally considered acceptable.
Sortino ratio
Like the Sharpe ratio, but it only counts downside swings as risk.
APY (annual percentage yield)
A return rate expressed as if it ran for a full year.
Overfitting
When a strategy is tuned so tightly to past data that it fails on new data.
Cold-start bias
Lower accuracy when a strategy or model is new and has not gathered enough live data yet.
Trend-following
A strategy that enters in the direction of an existing trend and rides it.
Mean reversion
A strategy that bets a price stretched far from its average will snap back.
Range-bound market
A market moving sideways between a floor and a ceiling rather than trending. Also called a sideways market.
Grid trading
A strategy that places staggered buy and sell orders across a price range to profit from back-and-forth movement. Minara's Futures Grid works this way.
Market regime
The prevailing market mood, such as trending vs. ranging or risk-on vs. risk-off.
Whipsaw
A sharp reversal that triggers a losing trade right before the price turns back your way.
Reward-to-risk ratio
How much you stand to gain versus how much you risk on a trade.
Trading styles
Scalping
Very short trades, in and out within minutes.
Day trading
Opening and closing positions within the same day.
Swing trading
Holding positions for days to weeks to catch larger moves.
Chart & indicators
Candlestick (K-line)
A chart bar showing the open, high, low, and close price for one time period.
Timeframe
The time each candle covers, such as 15-minute or 4-hour. Shorter timeframes show faster detail; longer ones show the bigger picture.
EMA (exponential moving average)
An average price that weights recent prices more heavily, used to read trend direction.
RSI (relative strength index)
A 0–100 gauge of whether an asset looks overbought (high) or oversold (low).
MACD
An indicator that compares two moving averages to flag shifts in momentum.
Bollinger Bands
Bands above and below an average price that widen with volatility, used to judge whether price is stretched.
ATR (average true range)
A measure of how much an asset typically moves, often used to size stops.
Support / resistance
Price levels where an asset has tended to stop falling (support) or stop rising (resistance).
Wallets, funds & on-chain
USDC
A stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Minara's perps wallets are funded with USDC.
USDH
A stablecoin used to settle Hyperliquid prediction markets and some transfers.
Stablecoin
A crypto token designed to hold a steady value, usually $1.
Arbitrum
The blockchain network Minara uses to move USDC in and out. Deposits must arrive via Arbitrum.
On-chain
Recorded directly on a public blockchain, visible and verifiable by anyone.
Layer 1 / Layer 2
A Layer 1 is a base blockchain, like Hyperliquid's own chain. A Layer 2 is built on top of another chain to make it faster or cheaper, like Lighter.
Non-custodial wallet
A smart-contract wallet where you keep beneficial ownership of your funds and can export the private key at any time. Minara operates the controlling key on your behalf so you do not have to handle keys or gas yourself.
Self-custody
Holding your own keys and controlling funds directly, the opposite of custodial.
Smart contract wallet
A wallet that is itself an on-chain program, which makes its activity auditable, rather than an entry in a company database.
Gas
The network fee paid to process an on-chain transaction. Minara's wallet covers this for you.
DEX / CEX
A decentralized exchange (DEX) runs on-chain with no central operator. A centralized exchange (CEX) is run by a company that holds your funds.
Perps wallet
Your trading wallet for perpetuals. Each one is tied to a single exchange, Lighter or Hyperliquid.
Private key
The secret that controls a wallet's funds. Anyone who has it can move the money, so never share it.
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