Short, clear definitions of the terms behind quantitative NQ trading. Each entry links to its full guide where one exists. For the long-form library, see Learn.
Performance & risk
Profit factor — Gross profit divided by gross loss over a set of trades. Above 1.0 is profitable, below 1.0 loses money; for scalping, 1.3–1.6 net of costs is a solid edge. → Read more
Win rate — The share of trades that close in profit. It says nothing about the size of wins versus losses, so it only means something read alongside risk/reward. → Read more
Risk/reward ratio — The average win divided by the average loss. Together with win rate, it determines whether a system has positive expectancy. → Read more
Expectancy — The average result expected per trade: (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss). The single figure that says whether an edge exists. → Read more
Prop firm rules
Static drawdown — A fixed maximum-loss floor set from the starting balance that never moves. The most forgiving type, because banked profit becomes a permanent cushion. → Read more
Trailing drawdown — A loss limit that follows your profit peak upward and never moves back down, so giving back gains can breach it even while you're still in profit. Hardest in its real-time intraday form. → Read more
Indicators & concepts
Repaint — When an indicator's display on closed historical bars changes after the fact, so the history no longer matches what you'd have seen live. A non-repainting tool confirms each signal at candle close and never revises it. → Read more
Percentile deviation bands — Price bands whose width comes from the empirical percentile of recent deviations around a centerline, rather than a fixed standard-deviation multiple. A tag of the 90 band means price is more stretched than ~90% of recent behaviour. → Read more
Mean reversion — The tendency of price to return toward a statistical average after stretching away from it. The basis of contrarian scalping, and what NQ does most of the time. → Read more
VWAP — Volume-Weighted Average Price: the average price over a period weighted by volume. Used as a fair-value reference and as a band centerline; session VWAPs anchor to the NY or London open. → Read more
Market structure — The sequence of impulsive legs and corrective pullbacks that describes how price is moving, and how to tell continuation from reversal. → Read more
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