Build a vocabulary for price formation, execution risk, and algorithmic interaction across exchanges.
Browse all topic termsMicrostructure terms explain how orders become trades, how liquidity is revealed or hidden, and how execution quality deteriorates under stress. This hub translates market mechanics into a working vocabulary for trading, analytics, and platform strategy.
Latency, spread, slippage, and order-book depth are tightly connected. A glossary that treats them separately without showing execution tradeoffs fails both education and strategy; this hub is meant to keep them connected.
Execution vocabulary is not relevant only to prop desks. Fintech products using brokerage, treasury, token swaps, or AI-driven signals all depend on the same underlying language of price formation and market impact.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
SEC: Market Structure and Algorithmic Trading
Primary regulator source for market structure, algorithmic trading, execution quality, and trading-system risk context.
Bank for International Settlements
BIS CPMI-IOSCO: Principles for financial market infrastructures
International standards for payment systems, settlement systems, central counterparties, and trade repositories.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
SEC: Private Funds
Regulator source for private funds, venture capital fund context, exempt advisers, fundraising, and investor-risk framing.
Algorithmic Trading
Trading using automated algorithms.
High-Frequency Trading (HFT)
Trading using powerful computers at high speed.
Market Maker
Firm providing liquidity by buying and selling.
Liquidity Pool
Collection of funds locked in a smart contract.
Arbitrage
Profiting from price differences in markets.
Slippage
Difference between expected and executed price.
Volatility
Degree of variation of a trading price series over time.
Order Book
List of buy and sell orders.
Spread
Difference between bid and ask price.
Latency
Time for data to travel.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Total value of goods and services produced in a country.
Gross National Product (GNP)
Total value of goods and services produced by a country's residents.
Deflation
Decrease in the general price level of goods and services.
Stagflation
High inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand.
Recession
Period of temporary economic decline.
Supply and Demand
The relationship between the quantity of a commodity and its price.
Elasticity
Measure of a variable's sensitivity to a change in another variable.
Monopoly
A market structure characterized by a single seller.
Oligopoly
A market structure in which a few firms dominate.
Fiscal Policy
Use of government spending and tax policies to influence economic conditions.
Monetary Policy
Central bank actions to manage money supply.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
Theory comparing currencies through a "basket of goods".
Trade Deficit
When a country's imports exceed its exports.
Surplus
An amount of something left over when requirements have been met.