Trade Plans Glossary: Pivot, Support, Resistance and More

Trade Plans glossary

Every term used in a daily plan, defined plainly. If something in a plan is unfamiliar, it is here.

The learning center covers how the pieces fit together.

The levels themselves

Resistance: a price above the current market where sellers have stepped in before. A move up into resistance is a spot to expect friction.
Support: a price below the current market where buyers have defended before. A move down into support is a spot where a fall may slow or stop.
Pivot: the level nearest the last close. Price usually interacts with it first, which makes it the natural reference for judging the session.
Level: any single price in the plan. A level marks where the market has reacted before, and the session shows whether it reacts there again.
Cluster: several nearby reaction prices grouped into one level, so the plan shows one meaningful line summarizing several near-identical ones.
Sidelined: a session where the levels did not resolve into anything worth trading. The plan states that plainly. Sitting out is a legitimate outcome.

Sessions and timing

Regular session (RTH): the main cash-market hours. 9:30am to 4:00pm ET for the US instruments, 10:00am to 4:00pm Sydney for the ASX 200, and each exchange's own cash hours for the other markets. Levels are built from this window, so they describe the hours most traders actually trade.
Prior session: the session before the one a plan covers. Free-tier levels are prior-session levels, published with a breakdown of how price behaved around them.
Overnight session: futures hours outside the regular session. ES and NQ trade close to 23 hours a day, the SPI has a night session from 5:10pm Sydney, and the ETFs do not trade then at all.
Gap: an open away from the previous close, so the first traded price of the session skips over prices in between. A gap can put the market on the far side of a level before you have a chance to act at it.
Open, high, low, close: the four prices summarising a session. Session reviews quote these when describing how price moved around a level.

The instruments

SPY: an ETF holding the S&P 500 constituents. Trades in a stock account, in any share quantity, during regular US hours.
ES: the E-mini S&P 500 futures contract. $50 per index point, minimum tick 0.25 points, so $12.50 a tick. The micro version is MES at $5 per point.
QQQ: an ETF holding the Nasdaq 100 constituents, in a stock account like SPY.
NQ: the E-mini Nasdaq 100 futures contract. $20 per index point, minimum tick 0.25 points, so $5.00 a tick. The micro version is MNQ at $2 per point. The most volatile of the four US products covered.
ASX 200 / SPI: the ASX 200 is the Australian cash index; the SPI 200 is the futures contract written on it and the instrument that actually trades. A$25 per index point, minimum tick one point.
NIFTY 50: India's 50-stock index on the NSE, traded as index futures.
The other 17 markets: the Nikkei 225, KOSPI 200, FTSE China A50, Hang Seng, FTSE Taiwan, MSCI Singapore, DAX 40, Euro Stoxx 50, FTSE 100, CAC 40, IBEX 35, FTSE MIB, AEX, OMXS30, SMI, S&P/BMV IPC and Ibovespa. Each has its own page under Levels with its exchange and session hours.
Paired instruments: SPY and ES track the same index, as do QQQ and NQ. Trading both halves of a pair doubles one exposure.

Contract mechanics

Tick: the smallest price increment an instrument can move. Multiply the tick by the value per point to get what one tick is worth.
Index point: one whole point of the underlying index. Point value differs per contract, which is why the same index move is worth different amounts in ES and NQ.
Micro contract: a smaller version of a futures contract (MES, MNQ) with the same structure at a fraction of the point value, so position size can step in smaller increments.
Contract months: futures expire on a cycle. The SPI runs March, June, September and December, and levels always refer to the contract currently trading.
Pattern day trader rule: a former US rule that applied to margin stock accounts under $25000. FINRA eliminated it, and the $25000 minimum, on June 4, 2026, replacing it with an intraday margin standard. It never applied to futures, so ES and NQ were always outside it. Brokers may take until October 2027 to implement the change.

Using the plan

Decision point: what a level actually is. Price arriving at one gives you a defined place to find out whether the level holds.
Invalidation: the price at which the idea you were working from is wrong. A level gives you one, which is what keeps a loss contained.
Alert: a notification set near a level so you can step away from the screen. Watching and waiting is where impulsive entries come from.
Process review: checking after the close whether you followed your own rules, separately from whether the trade made money.
Free: the next session's levels 5 minutes before the open, plus how price behaved around the prior session's levels.
Pro: the upcoming session's levels, published about 1 hour after each market closes, with resistance, pivot and support points and the MyLinedChart levels.

Reading the session recap

Each plan opens with a recap of the session that just closed. The recap uses a small set of words, and each one has one meaning.

Touch: price trading at a level during the session. A plan line such as "Ibovespa 188065: touched 10 times, volume 1934" counts how often price came back to that one price.
Volume at a level: the contracts traded while price sat at that level. High volume at a level shows where most of the session's business got done.
Busiest levels: the levels with the most touches and volume in the session, listed under that heading in the Pro section of each plan.
Tagged: price reached a level and turned away without trading much beyond that price.
Held: price came back to a level, traded at it and stayed on the same side.
Reclaimed: price fell below a level, then traded back above it.
Lost: price was above a level and closed the move below it.
Ran through the levels: price moved through every level on one side of the pivot in a single move. The recap names the last level reached and the session high or low beyond it.
Zone: two or more levels close enough together that the recap treats them as one area, written as "the 23439.70 to 23486.10 zone".
Intraday change: the move from the session open to the close. Overall change is the move from the previous close to this close, so the overall change includes any gap.

Lines in the plan itself

Nearest pivot: the plan level closest to the last price. The recap tells the session's story from this price.
Resistance above: every plan level higher than the pivot, listed from nearest to farthest.
Support below: every plan level lower than the pivot, listed from nearest to farthest.
"Above X, Y next": if price trades above level X, Y is the next level in the plan on that side. The line saves you reading the whole list during the session.
"Lose X, Y next": if price falls below level X, Y is the next level down.
All listed levels: the full set of prices for the session in one line, ready to copy into a charting tool.
Weekly recap: the Sunday summary of the week for each market: the week's open and close, high and low, nearest support and resistance, and the busiest levels across the five sessions.

Calendar and contracts

Half-day close: a session the exchange closes early, such as the day after Thanksgiving in the US or Christmas Eve in London. The plan for that session follows the shortened hours.
Market holiday: a day the exchange is shut. No session means no plan.
Front month: the futures contract with the nearest expiry, which carries most of the volume.
Contract roll: the switch from the expiring contract to the next one. Prices jump on the roll because the new contract carries more months of interest and dividends, so levels from the old contract need converting to the new one.
Basis: the gap between a futures price and its cash index, such as ES minus SPX. The ES to SPY conversion page shows how to use the basis to move a level between the two.
Notional value: the full value of the index a futures contract controls. One ES at 6400 controls about $320000.
Margin: the deposit a broker holds to let you carry a futures position. Margin is a small slice of notional value, which is why losses can exceed the deposit.

Risk and execution

Stop loss: an order that closes a position at a set price. A level gives the stop a place to sit, as the stop placement guide covers.
ATR (average true range): the average distance an instrument travels in a bar or a session. Traders use ATR to set how far a stop sits from a level.
Slippage: the gap between the price you expected and the price you got. Slippage grows in fast markets and thin hours.
Liquidity: how much size trades near the current price. Deep liquidity means a large order moves price less.
Paper trading: trading in a simulated account. The paper to live guide covers the move to a live account.
Backtest: running a set of rules over past prices to see how the rules would have traded. A backtest of level-based rules needs the levels as they were published at the time, which is what the free downloads in each recap provide.
Repainting: an indicator that changes its past values once new bars arrive. Published levels never change after they go out, so a level on an old plan is the same price subscribers saw the morning the plan published.

A worked example

The NIFTY 50 plan for September 15 2026 listed a nearest pivot of 23500, resistance above at 23504.90, 23506.50, 23520.20 and 23640, and support below at 23496.80, 23486.10 and 23439.70. NIFTY opened at 23562.60, dropped through the pivot, tagged the 23439.70 to 23486.10 zone, kept falling to a low of 23180 and closed at 23220. In glossary terms, price lost the pivot, ran through every support level and closed below the whole plan. The sample plan walks through that day line by line.

Is any of this advice?

No. These are definitions of terms describing objective market structure. Trade Plans publishes no signals, no calls on direction and no recommendations. You make and own your trades.