Glossary

Obligation, not choice. Losses are theoretically unlimited.

Nothing ever traded as this series. It is a construction, and the rule used to build it decides where every historical level sits.

USDINR and friends. Mostly used by importers, exporters and banks to hedge, not by investors to speculate.

It preserves point-for-point moves and destroys absolute levels — old prices are no longer prices anyone paid, and they move again at the next roll. Ratio adjustment does the same job by multiplication, preserving percentages instead of rupee distances.

Reads as bearish and frequently is not. Rule out a dividend due before expiry, and remember that a crowded long book in a stock under F&O ban can only sell futures — the discount that produces is plumbing, not opinion.

The reason a headline of “GIFT Nifty up 110 points” can describe a flat open. Before treating the gap between two prices as information, check they are the same instrument — the carry alone can be a hundred index points.

Why a rolled long futures position can lose money in a year the spot price rose. Every roll buys the pricier contract.

Roughly in line with short-term interest rates in an ordinary market. A negative number is not automatically bearish: check for a dividend before expiry first, because the futures holder does not receive it and the price discounts it.

It shrinks to nothing at expiry by construction, so a currency futures chart can fall over a month in which the spot rate rose. Measure the premium as a distance and compare it with the move your setup expects.

The number every 8:30 am bulletin opens with. Compare it against its own level at 3:30 pm yesterday rather than against the Nifty cash close, and the basis cancels out — what remains is the genuine overnight change. It says nothing about any individual stock.

The same idea as cost of carry in an equity future, met on a currency chart. It is a financing number, not a view about either currency.

Where crude, gold, silver and industrial metals trade as dated, leveraged contracts.

The instrument your order actually joins. Levels, entries and stops belong on its chart; the spliced continuous chart is for shape and trend.

A second undisclosed choice on top of the adjustment method. It changes which sessions appear on your chart at all, so two platforms can disagree about the candles as well as the levels.

A spread widens either because the market is temporarily wrong or because something genuinely changed, and the two look identical on a chart. In India the short leg usually forces the trade into futures, which is why it remains largely institutional.

Cash selling alongside a growing long futures position is a different story from cash selling alongside growing shorts. Published free, read by almost nobody.

It is a survey taken once or twice a day, not a continuously traded series. Reading a divergence between it and the futures as though both were live prices misreads what one of the two numbers is.