Markets speak their own language — full of ratios, Greeks, and curious words like backwardation or contango. This guide breaks down some of the most common (and misunderstood) terms used in trading and investment circles.
Markets, like minds, move not only on facts but on expectations. The self-fulfilling prophecy shows how shared beliefs turn into order flow, liquidity events, and ultimately the prices that seem to “confirm” those beliefs.
Capital size should dictate strategy. What works for a $1,000 trader becomes reckless at $10M. The recent $17M loss on Hyperliquid shows how fragile structures — high leverage, linear contracts, and concentration — turn conviction into catastrophe. This essay breaks down why efficiency, not ego, defines survivability, and how inverse contracts, venue distribution, and leverage discipline transform outcomes.
The Understanding Market Mechanics series closes with the blindfold — the final veil that hides as much as it reveals. Markets are not neutral or transparent, but choreographed theatres of asymmetry where most begin at a disadvantage by design. This is not a guide to profit, but an invitation to awareness, humility, and the imagining of something fairer than the game we have inherited.
In markets, cycles are not random—they are patterned expansions and contractions shaped by accumulation, distribution, and the relentless hunt for liquidity. By weaving Wyckoff mechanics with Elliott Wave theory, we can begin to see markets not as chaos but as choreography: waves rising, breaking, and receding with purpose. Yet volume is the compass, and in unregulated arenas like crypto, where wash trading distorts the signal, discernment becomes survival.
In this third entry of the Understanding Market Mechanics series, we move beneath the surface of charts and candles into the bloodstream of the market itself: liquidity. From stop runs and iceberg orders to liquidity pockets, fair value gaps, price discovery, and reversion to the mean, this post explores how liquidity shapes every move. The market is not random—it is choreographed. Learn to read the current, and price stops looking like noise and starts speaking as a language.
