index fund. A single fund that buys a whole basket of companies for you, so instead of betting on one winner you own a slice of the entire market and ride along with it.

ETF. An exchange-traded fund is a basket of stocks (or bonds, or gold) bundled into one thing you can buy and sell during the day just like a single stock, which is why I find them handy for everyday investing.

beta. A simple measure of how wild a stock's ride is compared to the whole market: a beta near 1 moves about the same, above 1 swings harder, and below 1 stays calmer.

drawdown. How far something has fallen from its highest point, like watching ZM and PYPL sink roughly 80% from their peaks in 2022, the depth of the hole you have to climb out of.

market cap. What the whole company is worth right now if you bought every share, found by multiplying the share price by the number of shares, which is how we tell the giants from the minnows.

leverage. Using borrowed money to make a bigger bet than your own cash allows, which magnifies your gains and magnifies your losses just as fast when things go the wrong way.

margin. Money you borrow from your broker to buy more than you could pay for yourself, which I treat with great care, because if the trade drops too far the broker can force you to sell at the worst possible moment.

cash flow. The actual money flowing in and out of a business each period, not promises or paper profits but real dollars, which is why I trust it as one of the honest signs that a company is healthy.

support. A price level where a stock has stopped falling before, a floor where buyers tend to step back in, useful to watch even though no floor holds forever.

resistance. A price level where a stock has struggled to push past before, a ceiling where sellers tend to show up, the mirror image of support.

relative strength. Whether a stock is outrunning or lagging the broader market, and I lean toward the leaders, because the strongest names in a healthy market often keep leading the way.

weekly close. Where a stock finishes on Friday after a full week of trading, which I find tells a calmer, truer story than the noisy ups and downs of any single day.

higher low. When each dip stops falling at a level above the last dip, a quiet sign that buyers are growing more confident and an uptrend may be building underneath.

position sizing. Deciding how much money to put into one trade so a single bad call never sinks you, which to me is the unglamorous habit that keeps you in the game for the long run.