Every stock market game throws jargon at you. Keep this glossary handy — it explains the essential trading terms in plain English, no finance degree required.
Tip: Hit Ctrl+F to jump straight to any term you don't recognize.
Bookmark this page and open it alongside the simulator. Each term below appears somewhere in our games.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ask | The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept for a share. |
| Average cost | The average price you paid for the shares you currently hold — your break-even point. |
| Bear market | A prolonged period of falling prices, usually a drop of 20% or more. |
| Bid | The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay for a share. |
| Bull market | A prolonged period of rising prices and investor optimism. |
| Diversification | Spreading money across many holdings so one bad position can't sink your whole portfolio. |
| Dividend | A share of company profits paid out to shareholders, usually in cash. |
| Drift | The slight long-run upward or downward tendency built into a price model. |
| Equity | The total value of your account — cash plus the market value of all holdings. |
| Exchange | An organized marketplace (e.g. NYSE, Nasdaq) where shares are bought and sold. |
| Liquidity | How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. |
| Long | Owning a stock, profiting if its price rises. |
| Market maker | A trader who continuously quotes both a bid and an ask to keep markets liquid. |
| Mean reversion | The tendency of a price to drift back toward its average after a big move. |
| Portfolio | The full collection of investments you hold. |
| Position | A single holding — the shares you own (or are short) in one ticker. |
| Profit & loss (P/L) | How much money a position or portfolio has gained or lost. |
| ROI | Return on investment — your gain or loss as a percentage of what you started with. |
| Sector | A group of companies in the same industry, such as Tech or Energy. |
| Share | A single unit of ownership in a company. |
| Short | Betting a stock will fall by selling borrowed shares first. |
| Spread | The gap between the bid and the ask price. |
| Stock | A security representing fractional ownership in a company. |
| Ticker | The short symbol used to identify a stock, like NOVA or QBIT. |
| Volatility | How much and how quickly a price swings; higher volatility means bigger moves. |
| Volume | The number of shares traded over a period. |
Reading definitions only gets you so far. Open the stock market simulator and watch a spread, a position and your ROI come alive as you trade $10,000 of play money.
The bid is the highest price a buyer will pay; the ask is the lowest price a seller will accept. The gap between them is the spread.
Return on investment — your profit or loss expressed as a percentage of your starting balance.
Higher-volatility stocks swing more dramatically, offering bigger gains but bigger losses. Diversifying smooths it out.