If a term would still work as an order ticket, we defined it until it would not.
- Classroom book
- The impersonal $100,000 model every student sees. Illustrative weights, not your account and not a target allocation.
- Money mask
- Percentages, prices, and leans stay real; dollar size is normalized to the shared model. Masking is how a publication avoids becoming per-person advice.
- Two surfaces
- The publication students pay for, and the operator engine that is never sold. Confusing the rooms is how a research desk becomes an advice product.
- Deployable cash
- Settled, unleveraged dry powder. The only cash figure this classroom will study a size against.
- Buying power
- A leveraged figure that looks like cash. Studying a size against it makes a small idea look cheaper than it is. Not powder.
- Margin cash line
- An accounting shadow that can print negative. A warning about how the account is financed, not a pile you can spend.
- Sleeve
- A group of holdings that tend to share an economic story — equity, rates, real assets, cash. Diversification is about sleeves, not ticker count.
- HHI
- Herfindahl-Hirschman Index: the sum of squared portfolio weights. Higher means the book is closer to a single bet. 1 / HHI is a rough “effective number of names.”
- Correlation
- How two series tend to move together. Near 1 they travel as one. Near 0 they wander separately. In stress, many correlations rise — the grid goes one color.
- Volatility
- How much a path wiggles. Not the same as ruin, and not the same as drawdown.
- Drawdown
- The fall from a previous peak to a later trough, as a percent of that peak. A quiet market can still strand you in a deep hole.
- VaR (classroom)
- A percentile from a toy simulation — here, starting equity minus the 5th percentile of simulated endings. Not a maximum loss and not next year’s result.
- Monte Carlo (toy)
- Many made-up paths under assumed drift and volatility (geometric Brownian motion). A teaching fan, not a forecast.
- Kelly fraction
- f* = p − (1 − p) / b. The growth-optimal fraction under assumed odds. Fragile to bad p and b. Never an order size for a person.
- Research lean
- A tally of voting nodes: bullish, mixed, or bearish. A score, not a ticket, not a forecast.
- Twelve nodes, ten votes
- The classroom voting board shows twelve instruments. Ten carry directional weight. Kelly (sizing) and cycle study are shown and silent.
- Abstain
- A node with nothing honest to say stays quiet. Zero news articles is not a mood of 50. Thin tallies do not become secret leans.
- Gate
- A process check that can reject an idea before it becomes a fill — hours, stale data, cash floor, daily-loss brake, position cap. About process, not whether a name is “good.”
- Signal vs gate
- A constructive lean can still produce zero fills if a size rule refuses. The clash is the lesson. A failed cap is not a stock grade.
- Degraded run
- A snapshot too old, or a source offline, labeled Cached — not Live. Fluent notes on a stale tape are stories. No paper records on a degraded run.
- Paper fill
- A hypothetical journal line at a staged quote. No broker, no routing, no live order. Inherent limits: hindsight, no real fear, no taxes.
- Staged quote
- A classroom price used as a prop for the math. Not a licensed live feed and not something to trade against.
- Regime
- A weather system for markets — trending, ranging, stress — read from breadth, width, and stretch. A backdrop for reading, not a prediction of the next season.
- Publisher line
- Classroom English for staying impersonal, bona fide, and regular. One book for every student. Not legal advice; counsel still classifies a live product.
- Fee drag
- The compounding gap between a gross classroom path and the same path after costs. Small annual gaps become large stories over time.