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• AAR - Against all risks.

• Abandoned Baby Pattern - A rare candlestick pattern in which an upside gap doji star (where the shadows do not touch) is followed by a downside gap black candlestick where the shadows also do not touch; considered a major top reversal signal.

• ABC - Elliott wave terminology for a three-wave countertrend price movement. Wave A is the first price wave against the trend of the market. Wave B is a corrective wave to Wave A. Wave C is the final price move to complete the countertrend price move. Elliott wave followers study A and C waves for price ratios based on numbers from the Fibonacci series.

• Acceptance (also acc.,) - The agreement written on a draft and signed by the drawee - who becomes the acceptor - to pay the specified amount on the due date. The term is also applied to the accepted time draft itself. See also ‘Bill of exchange’.

• Acceptance Credit - A documentary credit which requires, amongst the documents stipulated, provision of a term bill of exchange. The bill is then generally accepted by the bank on which it is drawn or discounted. The practical result is that the beneficiary is paid promptly at a discount.

• Acceptor - The person who accepts a bill of exchange drawn on them. Until they accept, they are called the drawee. By accepting the bill the acceptor undertakes to pay the person presenting the bill the face value of that bill. On payment, the acceptor retires the bill. Where the acceptor is the initial provider of the credit, by arrangement, on the maturity of the bill, they require the borrower to place their funds on an amount equivalent to the face value of the bill.

• Actuals - Refers to actual physical commodities, as distinguished from futures.

• Adaptive Filter - Smoothing and/or forecasting prices with a continuously updated weighting of past prices.

• Advanced Payment Guaranteed Bond - This is a guarantee that advance payments will be returned if the party having received such payments does not perform its part of the contract.

• Advance-Decline Line - Each day's number of declining issues is subtracted from the number of advancing issues. The net difference is added to a running sum if the difference is positive or subtracted from the running sum if the difference is negative.

• Adverse Excursion  - The loss attributable to price movement against the position in any one trade.

• Advice of Fate - A request for advice of payment/non-payment (acceptance/non-acceptance) of a bill of exchange.

• Advising Bank - The bank that notifies or advises the exporter that a credit has been opened in the exporter’s favor. The advising bank, usually located in the exporter’s country, fully informs the exporter of the conditions of the documentary credit without itself making a payment commitment.

• After Date - Payment on a negotiable instrument, such as a bank draft, becomes due to a specified number of days after presentation of the draft.

• Agent / Agency Agreement - An agent is an independent person or legal entity that acts on behalf of another (the ‘principal’). In international transactions, generally refers to a  sales representative who prospects on behalf of a foreign principal, earning a commission on sales eventually concluded between the principal and the ultimate client (see also ‘Foreign sales agent’). 

• All Risks (AR) - A type of insurance coverage providing somewhat more than the minimum coverage, at a premium above the base amount paid under a particular policy.

• American Depository Receipts (ADR) - Certificates that are issued by a bank of US origin and traded in the U.S. as domestic shares.

• Analysis of Variance - The partitioning of the total sum of squares into the sum of squares explained by the model and the remaining sum of squares unexplained.

• Anaume - An exceptional exhaustion pattern (meaning "gap filling") composed of five candles.

• Anchoring-and-Adjustment - The tendency to evaluate current decisions in the context of past events.

• Andrews Method - A technique whereby a technician will pick an extreme low or high to use as a pivot point and draw a line, called the median line, from this point that bisects a line drawn through the next corrective phase that occurs after the pivot point.

• Annealing (Simulated) - Generally a metallurgical process, in artificial intelligence a process in which a neural net work searches for a set of weights to minimize errors; the search constantly shrinks as the weights find better values, analogous to the rearrangement of the molecules in a heated metal bar as the bar cools.

• Annual Earnings Change - The historical earnings change between the most recently reported fiscal year earn ings and the preceding.

• Annual Net Profit Margin - The percentage that the company earned from gross sales for the most recently reported fiscal year.

• Annual Sales Change - The percentage change in sales between the most recently reported fiscal year and the preceding.

• Annualize - Translating the figures for a given year into an annual rate.

• Antithetic Forecast - Two forecasts whose errors are negatively correlated.

• Applicant - In the documentary credit process, normally the buyer or importer, who applies (thus, the applicant) for a documentary credit in favour of the beneficiary, the seller.

• Arbitrage - The simultaneous purchase and sale of two different, but closely related, securities to take advantage of a disparity in their prices.

• Artificial Intelligence - The field of computer science dedicated to producing programs that attempt to mimic the processes of the human brain.

• Astrophysical Cycle - The tendency to evaluate current decisions in the context of past events. Any earthly cycle, such as a market cycle, that has been scientifically related to the physics of the planetary system.

• Attenuation - The fractional part of reduced energy or lost power due to smoothing or filtering.

• Autocorrelation - The correlation between the values of a time series and previous values of the same time series.

• Autoregressive - Using previous data to predict future data.