THE LEXICON
The vocabulary of the desk.
Defined the way it's used.
EVERY TERM THE TERMINAL PUTS ON YOUR GLASS · NOTHING HERE IS ADVICE
Every panel on the floor speaks a working language. This page is that language written down — not textbook definitions, but what each term means at the moment you're reading it on a screen with size on. Each entry says where it lives in the terminalthe terminal — the part behind a seat.
THE DEALING RANGE · EQUILIBRIUM · OTE · BIAS · THE OBJECTIVE · THE KEY OPEN · GLOBEX & THE OVERNIGHT SESSION · INITIAL BALANCE · THE PRINT · THE RANDOM-WALK BASELINE · THE POCKET EVENT · LIQUIDITY & STOP RUNS · FRAGILITY · DEALER GAMMA · GAMMA WALLS · THE EXPECTED MOVE · TERM STRUCTURE · 25-DELTA SKEW · OPEN INTEREST · COT · FRONT MONTH & THE ROLL · TICK SIZE & POINT VALUE · TRAILING DRAWDOWN · DAILY LOSS LIMIT · EVALUATION & FUNDED ACCOUNTS · THE COMMITMENT · THE AUDIT · SIM · SAMPLE · DELAYED
THE RANGE · THE MACHINES · THE OPTIONS · THE RAILS · THE LABELS
The Dealing Range
The high and the low that the overnight session prints between 18:45 and 22:03 ET — the first honest structure of the trading night. Once the window closes, the range is fixed: every range-derived level the method uses for the session comes from those two prices — the key open stands beside them, stamped at 18:00. A range is a map of where business was done, not a prediction of where it will be done next.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel — drawn to scale, published on the first pass after the 22:03 ET close, archived on THE PRINTS.
Equilibrium — EQ
The midpoint of the dealing range. Above it, the session is trading in the upper half of its own business; below it, the lower. The desk treats EQ as the dividing line that decides which side of the range a trader is allowed to work — not because the midpoint is magic, but because one consistent rule beats a nightly opinion.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel — the dashed line through the middle of the range box.
OTE — Optimal Trade Entry
The pocket between the 0.618 and 0.79 retracement of the dealing range, measured against the session's bias. The idea: a move that pulls back deep — but not all the way — offers a defined place to do business with the far end of the range as the reference objective. The pocket is geometry, and geometry is free; what a trader does inside it is the whole job.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel — the gold band inside the range box.
Bias
Which side of equilibrium the session closed the range-forming window on. A close at or above EQ reads LONG; below, SHORT. It is frozen when the print publishes after the 22:03 close and never re-decided mid-session — a bias that updates itself all night is an opinion, not a rule.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel and the nightly RANGE PRINTED push.
The Objective
The far end of the dealing range in the direction of the bias — the reference level the method watches for, session after session. On THE PRINTS, every session is scored by one question: did the objective print before the opposite extreme broke? The answer is recorded either way, beside the random-walk baseline that says how often geometry alone would have produced it.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel (the chevron) and THE PRINTS record.
The Key Open
18:00 ET — the Globex reopen, when the futures session actually begins. The cash-market open at 9:30 gets the television coverage; the overnight session that precedes it prints the structure the morning inherits. The terminal is built around this clock, not the cash one.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel, the session clock, and the Globex badge in the terminal chrome.
Globex & the Overnight Session
CME Globex is the electronic session that runs close to twenty-three hours a day — Sunday evening through Friday afternoon, with a maintenance halt at 17:00 ET. Regular trading hours are the 9:30–16:00 ET window when the cash market is open alongside. The desk treats them as two different tapes wearing the same symbol.
Overnight volume is a fraction of the day's, so moves print on less and unwind on less. The overnight is information — where the range built, where price travelled — but it is not a rehearsal for the day session, and the desk does not read it as one. The first question asked of any print is which tape made it.
LIVES IN: the session clock and Globex badge — the terminal header's standing answer to which of the two tapes is running.
Initial Balance — IB
The first hour of regular trading hours, 9:30 to 10:30 ET, taken as a range. A Market Profile inheritance: the auction's first two thirty-minute periods, treated as the day establishing its opening balance. Plenty of desks frame the whole session against that hour — whether price extends beyond it, holds inside it, and which side it leaves first.
This desk frames its day around the dealing range instead — one structure, drawn by one rule, rather than a fresh box every morning. But the concept explains why the first RTH hour earns its own name: it is when the full set of participants arrives and the auction states its opening terms. Worth knowing, because much of the room still trades against it.
LIVES IN: the session clock — the terminal keeps the hour but draws no box for it; the desk's box is the dealing range.
The Print
The moment the dealing-range window closes and the session's numbers become fixed — the range, EQ, the bias, the pocket, the objective. On this desk "the print" is a timestamped event: the levels are published and pushed before the session plays out, then scored after it. A level called after the fact is not a print; it is a story.
LIVES IN: the 22:03 ET RANGE PRINTED push and THE PRINTS record.
The Random-Walk Baseline
The null hypothesis THE PRINTS scores against. A random walk has no view and no memory, yet handed the same dealing range it still resolves to one side or the other — at odds set by nothing more than where price sits inside it. That is the bar. Any nightly condition must call the resolution better than that memoryless walk would have, given identical geometry, or it counts for nothing.
This is also why the house says conditions are not forecasts. Clearing the baseline over a finite sample describes a tendency, not a promise about tomorrow; failing it retires the condition. Either way, the score is published rather than asserted — the desk keeps the receipts.
LIVES ON: THE PRINTS record (prints.html) — the scoring method and its running record, published in full.
The Pocket Event — the stricter score
The stricter scored event. The raw objective is generous: at range close price sits near one end, and geometry alone hands it a fat baseline. The pocket event refuses the head start — a session counts only when price pulls back into the OTE pocket before the outcome. From the pocket's near edge, a driftless walk reaches the objective first roughly 38% of the time, computed each session from the geometry. Beat that over enough fills and the beating means something.
A fill on the same bar as the outcome is refused; the tape cannot prove which came first, and the desk does not score what it cannot order. The tally publishes at twenty fills, separately from the raw event.
LIVES ON: THE PRINTS page — the pocket fields of each session's record, sealed into the v2 commitment and auditable on the VERIFY page.
Liquidity & Stop Runs
Resting orders cluster at obvious prices — prior highs and lows, the extremes of the range — because that is where the crowd parks its stops and its entries. When price reaches such a shelf it often trades through rather than up to it: the stops beyond, once triggered, turn into market orders, and that forced flow fills whoever wanted the other side. A poke through a prior low that snaps straight back is not proof of a hunt. It is what a book looks like when an obvious price gets tested.
That much is order-flow mechanics. Whether any given sweep was engineered, and by whom, is model-dependent; the desk declines to guess. It is why the extremes of the dealing range get watched and mid-range noise does not.
LIVES IN: THE LEVELS panel — the top and bottom edges of the range box, where the resting orders sit.
Fragility — and why it is not a forecast
Whether the tape is currently standing on the conditions that have accompanied violent, mechanical selling: leverage that is cheap to carry, positioning that is crowded, volatility compressed enough that risk models permit large notional, and collateral demands already scheduled. These are conditions, and conditions carry no timing. They persist for months without incident, and the desk says so rather than dressing patience up as warning.
What no public instrument can do — and the desk will not pretend otherwise — is know that a particular fund is about to liquidate. A fund's leverage, haircuts and margin status are filed to the SEC on Form PF and are confidential by statute. Anyone selling advance knowledge of a named fund's unwind is selling a guess or a crime.
LIVES IN: THE PRESSURE GAUGE — an unweighted count of conditions in the top fifth of their own history, each with its window and lag printed beside it.
Dealer Gamma — and the Flip
An estimate of how much options dealers must buy or sell as the index moves, given the open interest they are positioned against. When net gamma is positive, dealer hedging leans against the tape — moves tend to be dampened. When it is negative, hedging leans with the tape — moves tend to run. The flip is the index level where the estimate changes sign. Every gamma number anywhere rests on a model of who holds what; the terminal states its assumptions on the panel itself.
LIVES IN: the DEALER GAMMA drawer — net GEX, regime, the flip, computed from the delayed SPX chain.
Gamma Walls
The strikes carrying the heaviest concentrations of dealer gamma — usually large open-interest calls above and puts below. Around them, hedging flow is thickest — and what it does depends on the regime: in positive gamma, approaches tend to slow and price can pin; in negative gamma, hedging feeds the move instead. A wall is a concentration of obligation, not a guarantee of a bounce.
LIVES IN: the DEALER GAMMA drawer — top call and put walls by strike.
The Expected Move
What the options market paid for a day's move — a band either side of spot — read from the price of the at-the-money straddle on the nearest expiry. It is not a forecast — it is the size of the bet the market itself placed. The desk reads a level beyond the expected move as a claim that needs a reason of its own.
LIVES IN: the SPX OPTIONS DESK drawer and the morning Sheet.
Term Structure — Contango and Backwardation
The VIX curve across maturities. In contango, longer-dated volatility costs more than near-dated — the market paying up to sleep at night, the usual state. In backwardation the front rises above the back: the market paying up for protection now, which is what stress looks like on a curve. The shift between the two matters more than either state.
LIVES IN: the VIX TERM STRUCTURE drawer — 9D / 30D / 3M / 6M, with the regime named.
25-Delta Skew
The implied-volatility gap between out-of-the-money puts and calls at comparable deltas. When puts cost meaningfully more than calls, the market is paying for downside insurance; when the gap narrows or inverts, it isn't. Skew is a price of fear, updated continuously.
LIVES IN: the SPX OPTIONS DESK drawer.
Open Interest — OI
The number of contracts currently open — not the number traded. Volume counts hands changing and resets to zero every session. Open interest counts commitments still standing: created when a new long meets a new short, destroyed when both sides close out. A million contracts can change hands without it moving an inch.
The desk reads it as raw material. COT positioning is open interest sorted by who holds it — the same standing contracts, filed by owner, once a week. And every dealer-gamma figure is a model run over options open interest; every gamma number anywhere rests on a model. The count is the fact. What it implies is the argument.
LIVES IN: the COT POSITIONING drawer and the DEALER GAMMA drawer — the raw count both are built from.
COT — the Commitments of Traders
The CFTC's weekly census of futures positioning. The non-commercial net — speculators' longs minus shorts — is the desk's read on how the fast money is leaning in ES, NQ, CL and GC. It is Tuesday's data released Friday, and the terminal says so on the panel: positioning context, never a timing signal.
LIVES IN: the COT POSITIONING drawer, weekly.
Front Month & the Roll
In the index futures, the front month is the nearest quarterly contract — March, June, September, December — and it carries nearly all the volume; the others are furniture. Four times a year, in roll week, that volume migrates to the next expiry. The two contracts do not trade at the same price: carry — the cost of rates against dividends between expiries — sits in the spread, so a level drawn on the old contract does not transfer untranslated. The map moves with the money.
The house does not referee the hand-off; it records it. The Data Receipts name the contract each nightly print was cut from, and when the desk moves months, levels are recut — not slid across.
LIVES IN: Data Receipts (status.html) — the contract stamp on every nightly print, and THE LEVELS panel that print governs.
Tick Size & Point Value
A tick is the smallest increment a contract is allowed to print; a point is the full handle. NQ ticks in quarter points worth $5 each — $20 a point. ES ticks in quarter points worth $12.50 each — $50 a point. The micros run the same increments at one-tenth the money.
The desk treats this as its exchange rate. A stop distance means little in points and everything in dollars, and dollars are read against the daily loss limit. Stop in points, times point value, times contracts: that sum — not conviction — is what gets read against the headroom line. It is the one calculation on the desk with no model risk in it.
LIVES IN: YOUR DESK — the sums behind the headroom line and the DAILY LOSS LIMIT meter.
Trailing Drawdown
The prop-firm rule that moves your floor up as your equity makes new highs — and never moves it back down. It means an account can be above its starting balance and still one ordinary loss from termination. It is the single most misunderstood number in funded trading, which is why the desk tracks headroom to it on every prop account that logs its trailing figure.
LIVES IN: YOUR DESK — the headroom line on prop accounts that carry their trailing number.
Daily Loss Limit — and the Consistency Cap
The two rails most funded accounts live between: the most you may lose in a day, and the largest share of total profit any single day is allowed to represent. The first ends accounts; the second delays payouts. Both are your firm's rules — the desk's job is to hold them in front of you while you trade, not after.
LIVES IN: YOUR DESK rails — the DAILY LOSS LIMIT and CONSISTENCY meters on every prop card; the daily stop you arm in the Protocol drives the session light.
Evaluation & Funded Accounts
A prop-firm evaluation is a simulated account wearing a profit target and a set of drawdown rules. Pass it and the firm issues a funded account — which is still the firm's capital, run under the firm's rules, and at many firms still simulated underneath. The word carries more weight than the plumbing. What changes is not the market; it is the rulebook the account now answers to.
These accounts rarely die by market. They die by rule breach — a daily loss limit crossed, a consistency cap tripped, a trailing drawdown clipped on an open trade. That is the whole reason YOUR DESK carries prop rails: the rules, not the P&L, are the binding constraint.
LIVES IN: YOUR DESK — the DAILY LOSS LIMIT and CONSISTENCY meters, with the headroom line showing distance to breach.
The Commitment
Every change to the record is sealed: a SHA-256 of the whole record in a fixed canonical form — versioned, v2 since the pocket fields were added — with each link carrying the hash of the one before it. Since August 14, 2026, each hash is also submitted to OpenTimestamps and aggregated into a Bitcoin transaction.
What that proves: the record was never rewritten, and it existed by the time the anchor confirmed. What it does not prove, by itself: the 22:03 publication minute — no anchor certifies a clock. A commitment that hides its limits is a slogan, and a commitment nobody can check is not one. The audit runs in your browser, not ours.
LIVES ON: THE AUDIT page — your own browser refetches the record, rebuilds the canonical form, and rehashes it; the .txt canonical and .ots receipt sit beside it for checking elsewhere.
The Audit
The verify page, treated as an instrument. Your browser refetches the public record, rebuilds the canonical form — fields in fixed order, sessions in date order — and computes its SHA-256. That number sits beside the one the desk sealed into the chain. A match means the record you are reading is byte-for-byte the record committed; the anchored chain behind that commitment is what rules out a quietly rewritten past.
The limit, stated plainly: all of this proves the record was never altered — not that anything in it was worth writing down. For the skeptical there are the proof files, canonical text and Bitcoin receipt, to run the arithmetic somewhere the desk cannot reach. Trust is not requested. It is recomputed.
LIVES ON: verify.html — the server's commitment beside the hash your own browser recomputes, with the canonical .txt and .ots receipt available for download.
SIM · SAMPLE · Delayed — the Labels
The honesty labels the terminal never drops. SIM and SAMPLE both mark data that is simulated for demonstration — labeled on the panel itself, not in a footnote. Delayed marks real feeds carrying their publisher's delay, stated in minutes. Every feed's source, delay and state is published on Data Receipts, which this site treats as a contract.
LIVES ON: every panel, all the time. That's the point.
THESE TERMS ARE NOT THEORY HERE — THE DEALING RANGE CLOSES NIGHTLY AT 22:03 ET, PUBLISHES MINUTES LATER, AND IS SCORED IN PUBLIC. SEE THE RECORD →