Two registers

Trading words, sorted by what is left of them later — Ethiopia

Some of these words arrive as a figure and stay a figure. Others are true for a minute, then vanish unless a sentence holds them. That difference decides which words you never have to write down at all.

One trade is written down twice. The screen holds the figures: what was bought or sold, at what price, what the spread took, what the swap charged. A line written by hand holds the other half — what you expected, and why. The figures never say that.

Two registers, one trade

The two do not compete. Figures are exact and silent about reasons; a written line is vague about figures and is the only place your reasons exist. So the useful question about a new word is not «what does it mean» but «which register will still hold it in a month». Two answers are possible: it arrives as a figure and needs nothing from you, or it names something you decided — and then it ages into noise unless a figure is written beside it.

Words that arrive as figures

Copying these into a note is wasted effort — they are stated in units on the screen. The last column is what is worth writing.

Word	The figure it arrives as	What the figure never says
Spread	The gap between the buy and the sell price — the main cost of a trade	Why that cost was acceptable then rather than later
Pip	One step of price: on EUR/USD, 1.1000 to 1.1001, about 10 cents in the smallest sizes	How many pips you were willing to be wrong by
Lot and volume	Size in lots: one lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euros; 0.01 is tradable	Why that size and not the one above it
Long or short	Buy first, or sell first	What made the direction look obvious an hour earlier
Stop-loss, take-profit	Two levels that close the trade automatically when reached	The level you wanted first, and what moved it
Swap	The overnight charge, occasionally a credit, shown beforehand	Whether holding overnight was the plan or an accident
Margin, free margin	Set aside while a leveraged trade is open; the rest is not tied up	What the free part was being kept for
Balance, equity	Balance moves when a trade closes or money moves; equity counts open trades	Which of the two you were watching that evening
Drawdown	How far the account has fallen from its highest point	Which week of it was the one you stopped writing in

Words that fade unless a figure travels with them

These sentences get written often and read as blanks later. Each is repairable: attach what was on the screen and the line survives.

Written like this	What it says a month later	What to put beside it
«The spread was wide»	Nothing — wide against what is missing	The figure showing, and the instrument
«The market moved fast»	Nothing; the market moves all day	The candle watched, and the time it covered
«Free margin was tight»	An impression, unmeasurable afterwards	The figure, and what was still open
«Almost stopped out»	Little: a stop out is automatic, so it happened or it did not	How much margin the losses had eaten
«Leverage was too high»	An opinion about a setting	The volume opened, since size widens the swings
«It looked ready»	Nothing that can be checked	What was drawn, and the level that would have proved you wrong

A chart is a picture of where the price has been, not of where it will go, so a line about what a chart «showed» has to name what was on it — the page on charts covers candles.

The second reading, and the third

A line is written once and read several times, and each reading asks something different of it. Vocabulary problems surface on the second reading.

When it is read again	What the reading is for	What tends to be missing
The same evening	Checking your figures against the screen	Nothing yet — the trade is still remembered
A week later	Whether the reason still reads as a reason	Shorthand: one word that carried a whole thought
A month later	Noticing the same expectation written again	The instrument, whenever the line only said «it»
Once the trade is forgotten	Reading the line as a stranger would	Everything except figures and finished sentences

Two habits follow. A line that turned out wrong stays as written: an expectation recorded before the outcome is the only evidence of what you thought, and tidying it up destroys the one thing it was for. And a column that three readings in a row never look at is a column worth dropping.

What a word list cannot do

It does not say what happens next. A definition explains a word; a chart shows where the price has been, not where it will go.
It is not evidence about the market. A written line witnesses your own reasoning at one moment, and nothing else.
Words read on a page stay blurry. They sharpen beside an open screen: a demo account uses virtual money and real prices, so a wrong reading costs nothing.
Practice does not transfer whole. Demo results do not guarantee real-account results, and lines about how it felt transfer least.

Questions that come up once the notes pile up

Which words never need to be written down at all?

Anything from the first table. Those arrive as figures in units on the screen, and a copy by hand adds only a chance to copy it wrong.

My line and the figures disagree. Which one is right?

Both, about different things. The figures are right about what happened; the line is right about what you expected. The disagreement shows where the expectation broke.

A week went by with nothing written. Is it lost?

The reasons are; the figures are not. Write down the gap itself and what it coincided with — that line is the only thing those weeks leave behind.

Should an old line be corrected once you know how it ended?

It does not help, and it removes the only value the line had. Add a second line dated later, and leave the first one wrong.

How long is a line worth keeping?

Until two readings in a row take nothing new from it. First-week lines stop being readable well before that, which is normal — the vocabulary was still arriving.

Is anything worth writing when no trade was opened?

Yes, and those lines stay readable: what was on the screen, what would have had to happen for you to act, and what did not happen.

Do these words mean the same thing on a demo account?

The prices are real ones, so a line about a spread or a pip reads the same way. What does not carry across is how the decision felt with virtual money.

Which words belong in a line about money moving in or out?

What the screen asked for, when, and what was answered — the deposits page has the sequence.

Where do the words about size and loss get used?

In the decision before the click. The safety rules page shows how a stop-loss and a risk per trade are set; the wording here keeps that decision legible.

Where these words show up next

Your first trade

One small trade on a demo, and the note every later one is compared against.

Place a demo trade

Beginner mistakes

The errors visible only across a stack of lines, never inside a single one.

See what repeats

Account types

What to record while choosing, so the choice can be re-checked later, not argued.

Compare the accounts

A word gets its meaning the first time you write it about your own trade.

A demo account gives virtual money and real prices, free and with no time limit. Place something small, then write two lines: the figures the screen holds, and the reason it does not.

Open a free demo at Exness