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The words traders argue about, explained honestly.
Fair value gaps, order blocks, market structure, liquidity sweeps. Every one of these terms has a dozen confident definitions and no agreed one. These pages give you the definition, the places traders genuinely disagree, and the steps to find out whether it holds on your own trades — because that is the only version of the answer that is about you.
How these pages work
No strategy. No edge claimed.
Sage sells a journal, not a method. That turns out to be the useful position to explain trading vocabulary from.
- We define the termWhat the word means mechanically, and what a candle chart can actually show you — separated from what people infer on top of it.
- We show the disagreementsEvery one of these terms has several live definitions. Two traders testing “order blocks” are usually testing different rules and comparing the results anyway.
- We never say it worksWhether a pattern has an edge is a question about your record. These pages end with how to measure it, not with a verdict we are in no position to give.
Market structure
The shapes traders read a chart with, and where they disagree about them.
- 6 min readFair value gap (FVG)A range of price left behind by three consecutive candles whose first and third wicks do not overlap — the market passed through it quickly and in one direction.Read the concept →
- 6 min readOrder blockThe last candle against the direction of a sharp move, marked as a price zone and watched for when price returns to it.Read the concept →
- 6 min readMarket structure shiftA reading of price as a sequence of swing highs and lows, where a break beyond the last swing either continues the sequence (BOS) or reverses it (CHoCH).Read the concept →
Liquidity
Where orders rest, and what traders infer from price going there.
- 6 min readLiquidity sweepPrice trading beyond an obvious swing high or low — often a level with equal highs or lows — and then returning back through it.Read the concept →
- 5 min readPremium and discountA range divided at its 50% level — price above the midpoint is premium, below it is discount, and the midpoint itself is equilibrium.Read the concept →
Timing
When a market behaves differently, and how much of that is measurable.
Measurement
Numbers your own trades can produce, and what they do and do not prove.
Index
Every term, including the aliases.
The same idea travels under several names. Each one leads to the page that explains it rather than a thinner page of its own.
- Asian rangealias
- Basealias
- BISI / SIBIalias
- Break of structure (BOS)alias
- Change of character (CHoCH)alias
- Dealing rangealias
- Discount arrayalias
- Drawdown per tradealias
- Equilibriumalias
- Excursionalias
- Fair value gap (FVG)
- Heatalias
- Imbalancealias
- Inefficiencyalias
- Killzonealias
- Liquidity grabalias
- Liquidity sweep
- Liquidity voidalias
- London openalias
- Market structure break (MSB)alias
- Market structure shift
- Maximum adverse and favourable excursion
- New York openalias
- OBalias
- Optimal trade entry (OTE)alias
- Order block
- Origin candlealias
- Premium and discount
- Raidalias
- Run-upalias
- Session overlapalias
- Stop huntalias
- Stop runalias
- Supply and demand zonealias
- Trading session
- Trend structurealias
- Turtle soupalias
Where to test what you read
- FeatureBacktesting & Market ReplayBacktest a discretionary strategy the honest way: a full TradingView workspace paused at your cursor, no lookahead on any of 16 timeframes, intrabar fills from 1-minute data, trades you place in the moment, and an exact R:R simulator. Free.
- FeatureTrading PlaybookA trading playbook where each setup is a written play: thesis, rules, where it applies, how much it risks, and a life from idea to testing to live to retired. Pre-register the idea, link backtests and live trades to it, and see tested-vs-live results with per-rule adherence.
- FeatureTrading Analytics & Edge AnalysisTrading performance analytics that read what your journal recorded: expectancy by setup, session and tag with confidence intervals, an exact R:R simulator on real 1-minute price paths, Sharpe, Sortino, SQN, Kelly, drawdown and Monte Carlo ruin probability. Free.
Guides that go with these
- GuideHow to backtest a trading strategy without fooling yourselfA step-by-step method for manual backtesting: write the rules first, replay candle by candle with no lookahead, keep an out-of-sample stretch, measure in R and know when the sample is big enough.
- GuideHow to find your trading edge — in your own trades, not someone else'sAn edge is a condition under which your results beat your own baseline by more than chance explains. How to slice trades by setup, session, tag and time of day, compare against the baseline with confidence intervals, and avoid the traps of small samples and many comparisons.
- GuideTrading statistics that matter — and how each one lies aloneThe handful of numbers that describe a trading record honestly — and how each one lies when read alone. Win rate, expectancy, profit factor, maximum drawdown, Sharpe, Sortino, SQN, Kelly and Monte Carlo, with the sample-size caveat every one of them needs.
Read the definition. Then check it.
Tag the trades that used a concept and Sage reads back what they actually did — in R, against your own baseline, with the sample size beside every number. Free, no card.
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