Glossary
Glossary of Signal Service Terms
Key terms used in this guide, defined precisely so they mean the same thing throughout.
- AUM
- Assets Under Management — total capital a fund manager controls on behalf of clients. Signal services do not manage client money; AUM claims by signal providers should be scrutinised carefully.
- Backtesting
- Applying a trading strategy to historical data to simulate past performance. Backtests are a design tool; they are not verified live records. Overfitting is common.
- Bitcoin anchor
- A cryptographic hash stored in a Bitcoin transaction, making it permanently part of the public blockchain. Vector Ridge uses Bitcoin anchors via OpenTimestamps to timestamp every signal at publication.
- Conviction grade
- A rating (A through D in the Vector Ridge system) indicating how strongly a model's criteria are met by a given signal. Calibrated against live results, not backtest results.
- Drawdown
- The decline from a peak to a subsequent trough in account value. Maximum drawdown is the largest such decline in a given period. A critical risk metric that must accompany any return figure.
- Grade-A bar
- The minimum average per-trade return threshold for a signal to qualify as Grade A. In the Vector Ridge system: 0.70% for Day Trade, 4.50% for Multi Hour, 6.00% for Swing Trade.
- Independent audit
- Review of a trader's records by a named third party with no commercial relationship to the provider. Must cover a defined period, use primary records, and produce a publicly accessible result.
- OpenTimestamps
- An open-source protocol for anchoring cryptographic hashes to the Bitcoin blockchain. Used by Vector Ridge to provide immutable signal publication timestamps.
- P&L
- Profit and Loss — the net return on a set of trades over a given period, expressed as a percentage of the starting account or position size.
- Partial
- Capability matrix status indicating that some independently checkable evidence exists but it is incomplete or has a material verification gap.
- Preimage
- The raw input fed into the hash. For Vector Ridge that means a call's entry price, profit target, protective stop, conviction grade and firing time. Anyone holding it can recompute the hash and check it against the blockchain anchor.
- Sharpe ratio
- Return divided by volatility (standard deviation). Measures risk-adjusted performance. Above 2.0 over multiple years is exceptional; above 1.0 is good; below 0.5 is weak relative to the risk taken.
- Signal model
- A systematic framework generating trading alerts based on defined criteria. Vector Ridge operates four models: Day Trade, Multi Hour, Swing Trade, and Investing.
- Unverified
- Capability matrix status indicating no independently checkable evidence was found for a criterion.
- Verified
- Capability matrix status indicating a criterion is satisfied by evidence a buyer can independently check, without relying on the provider's own claims.
- Win rate
- The percentage of signals closing with a positive return. Must be read alongside average win size and average loss size; a high win rate with disproportionately large losses can still produce negative overall P&L.
- WCTC
- World Cup Trading Championships — the real-money trading competition at worldcupchampionships.com. Vector Ridge's founder entered for the first time in 2025, placing 4th in Annual Forex (168%), 5th in Q3 Forex (65.9%), and 1st in October Monthly Forex (59.35%), with a 294% aggregate.
- YTD
- Year-to-date — performance measured from 1 January to the current date.