Glossary

Terms are defined as the Engine uses them — where a term has broader meanings elsewhere, the definition here matches what the app computes.

Instruments & strategies

0DTE — Zero Days To Expiration: options that expire the same day they are traded. The database is built on SPX 0DTE strategies.

Credit spread — Selling one option and buying a further-out option of the same type and expiry, collecting a net credit. Defined risk: the maximum loss is (width − premium) × 100 per contract.

Iron condor — A put credit spread and a call credit spread on the same underlying and expiry. In the Engine each side is tracked as its own trade, and the pair is margined at the larger side only.

MEIC (Multiple-Entry Iron Condor) — A strategy that sells an iron condor (both sides, no trend gate) at each of several entry times through the day. Compared in depth in MEIC vs METF vs RATIO.

METF (Multiple-Entries Trend Following) — A strategy that sells a put or call spread at each entry, chosen by the day's EMA trend. The EMA pair (20-40, 5-40, 5-20) controls how entries split between the two sides.

Ratio spread (1P:2C / 1C:2P) — One large credit spread against two smaller opposite-side spreads at half the premium each; margined at the complex's maximum loss.

Width — Distance in points between a spread's short and long strikes.

Premium — The credit collected per spread, in dollars.

Stop loss — Exit trigger expressed as a percentage of the credit received (e.g. a 95% stop on a $3.00 credit closes near a $2.85 loss).

Entry time — The time of day (ET) a strategy opens its position; database entries run 09:33–15:51 on a 3–4 minute grid.

Expected move — The market-implied magnitude of the underlying's move by expiration, derived from option prices; context for how far short strikes sit.

Metrics

CAGR — Compound annual growth rate: the constant yearly growth rate that produces the observed equity path over the period.

Max drawdown — Deepest peak-to-trough decline of the equity curve over the period, as a percentage of the running peak (dollar terms shown alongside).

MAR — CAGR ÷ Max Drawdown over the same window: return earned per unit of drawdown. The Engine's primary risk-adjusted lens.

wMAR (weighted MAR) — MAR blended across two windows: w × MAR(base period) + (1 − w) × MAR(reference period), where w is the Base Weight you set. Both periods and the weight are shown in the interface, so the number is recomputable from the adjacent MAR columns. At weight 0 it collapses to the reference period's MAR — which is what the Simple view shows. Appears in Advanced view.

Relation — MAR (base period) ÷ MAR (reference period). Above 1 means the recent window was stronger than the longer benchmark; below 1 means weaker. Advanced view.

Sharpe ratio — Mean daily P/L divided by the standard deviation of daily P/L: return per unit of total volatility.

Sortino ratio — Mean daily P/L divided by downside deviation: like Sharpe but penalising only losing-day volatility.

Win rate — Winning spread-legs ÷ total legs over the period; a both-sided iron condor counts as two trades per day.

Confluence (0–5) — Neighbourhood robustness: how strongly the ten nearest parameter neighbours (entry time ±3 steps, premium ±2, same width/stop) confirm a strategy's MAR. High = the whole neighbourhood works; low = an isolated spike. Full explanation in Min Thresholds.

Correlation — Correlation of two strategies' daily returns. Portfolio Correlation is the average across all pairs — the construction's diversification score. Scale-invariant: contract counts don't change it.

Capital & risk

Buying power / margin — Capital a broker holds against a position. For a single-sided defined-risk spread: (width − premium) × 100 per contract. Call/put pairs on the same expiry are margined at the larger side only, with both collected premiums reducing the requirement (netting).

Margin peak — The largest single-day margin a portfolio used over the period.

True DD — A portfolio's maximum drawdown in dollars restated as a percentage of your account size (rather than of the equity peak).

Sequence risk — The dependence of outcomes on the order of returns: the same set of trading days rearranged can produce very different drawdowns. The reason Monte Carlo stress testing exists.

Monte Carlo simulation — Resampling the portfolio's historical daily P/L with replacement into thousands of alternative equity paths, to estimate the distribution of outcomes rather than a single history.

Engine objects

Strategy variant — One concrete parameter set (family, width, stop, premium, entry time, gate). Every variant is a selection over one backtest per atomic parameter combination.

Period (rolling vs calendar) — Rolling windows count trailing trading days (1W–52W) including the current partial month; calendar periods use completed months only (1M–24M, Total). Same span, different measurement.

Data through — The most recent trading day that is both backtested and in the cache the app reads; updates roughly weekly.

Mine — The scope containing strategies you imported yourself; private to your account.

Native Engine Portfolio — The Engine's round-trippable .json portfolio file: strategies, contracts, on/off states, aliases, account size.

Portfolio Hunter — A tool that solves a user-authored rule-set exactly: up to seven materially different portfolios from the backtested catalog, under one fixed, disclosed objective and the universe, capital, sizing and guardrails the user types in. Nothing but one disclosed default is pre-filled and no row is marked "best". Fully explained in Portfolio Hunter.