Abbreviations and acronyms

One note before the tables, because a glossary that does not say this is quietly endorsing everything in it. The terms marked with a dot are not used in this path. They come from particular schools of trading with their own vocabulary, and they are here so that you can read other people's material without being lost — not as a recommendation.

Market structure and price action

MS	Market structure — the pattern of highs and lows.
HH / HL	Higher high / higher low. The definition of an uptrend.
LH / LL	Lower high / lower low. The opposite.
BOS	Break of structure — price breaking the previous swing in the direction of the trend.
MSS / SMS	Market structure shift — failing to make a new extreme, then breaking the other way.
CHoCH	Change of character — the first structural break against the prevailing direction.
SFP	Swing failure pattern — an extreme is exceeded briefly and price closes back inside. The liquidity sweep from the article on chart patterns.
· MMBM / MMSM	Market maker buy / sell model. A named sequence from one school of analysis.

Liquidity and zones

Liq	Liquidity — in practice, resting orders available to trade against.
BSL / SSL	Buy-side / sell-side liquidity — the stops resting above highs and below lows.
FVG	Fair value gap — a price area crossed so quickly that little trading happened in it.
OB	Order block — the last opposite candle before a strong move. The supply and demand article.
BB	Breaker block — a zone that failed and is then watched from the other side.
POI	Point of interest — any area you expect a reaction at.
IPA	Inefficient price action — movement with very little trade behind it.
· MB	Mitigation block. Like a breaker, without a preceding sweep.
· OTE	Optimal trade entry — a specific retracement band used by one school.
· SMT	A divergence between two correlated instruments, for example the two large US index futures.

Volume profile and order flow

DOM	Depth of market — the order book.
VP / MP	Volume profile (by volume) and market profile (by time, using TPOs).
TPO	Time price opportunity — one mark per price per time interval.
POC	Point of control — the price with the most activity in a period.
vPOC	A point of control from an earlier session that price has not returned to since.
VA · VAH · VAL	Value area, and its high and low. The band holding about 70% of the activity.
HVN / LVN	High and low volume nodes — the fat and thin parts of a profile.
CVD	Cumulative volume delta — net aggression, accumulated. See the article on delta for what it does and does not mean.
OI	Open interest — contracts currently outstanding. Not volume: a measure of positions held, not trades done.

Time, sessions and execution

RTH	Regular trading hours — the session while the shares are open.
ETH	Extended trading hours — everything else the contract trades.
OVN	The overnight session.
IB	Initial balance — the first hour's range.
PDH / PDL	Previous day's high and low.
ONH / ONL	Overnight high and low.
BE	Break even — moving a stop to the entry price.
R:R	Risk to reward — the size of a target compared with the size of the stop.
P&L	Profit and loss.
GTC	Good till cancelled — an order that waits until it fills or you remove it. See the article on order types, and what it does at a contract roll.
· Killzone	A named window of expected volatility, from one school's schedule of the day.

Two that get confused constantly

Worth separating here, because the confusion is expensive rather than merely untidy.

Volume and open interest. Volume counts trades; open interest counts positions still held. A busy day with falling open interest is people closing, not people arriving.
Delta and volume. Delta is not «buying», it is net aggression — the difference between the two sides crossing the spread. Every trade already has a buyer and a seller.