Glossary
Plain-English definitions for the terms you'll see across UpsideOnly — from order types and P&L to payouts, cycles, and gamification. Search, or jump to a category.
Trading basics
Core concepts behind every trade you place.
Trading with virtual money instead of real funds. Every trade you place on UpsideOnly is a paper trade — the platform itself never asks you to risk real capital.
Also known as: virtual trading, simulated trading
See also: Virtual Balance
The $100,000 starting bankroll you receive at signup, used exclusively for paper trades. It has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn.
Also known as: paper money, virtual money
See also: Real Balance, Reset
A simulated buy or sell across equities, commodities, forex, or crypto. An open trade becomes a closed trade when you exit it; closed trades count toward your performance.
See also: Open Position, Closed Position
A trade that profits when the price goes up. You "go long" by buying with the expectation of selling higher.
See also: Short
A trade that profits when the price goes down. You "go short" by selling first with the expectation of buying back lower.
See also: Long
A trade you've entered but not yet closed. Its P&L moves with the market in real time and is unrealized until you close it.
See also: Unrealized P&L, Closed Position
A trade you've exited. Its P&L is now realized and locked into your virtual balance.
See also: Realized P&L
UpsideOnly supports four asset classes for paper trading: Equities (stocks), Commodities (gold, oil, etc.), Forex (currency pairs), and Crypto.
Order mechanics
How orders are placed and automatically managed.
An order to buy or sell immediately at the best price currently available. Fast execution, but the fill price can differ slightly from what you saw on screen.
See also: Slippage
An order to buy or sell only at a specific price or better. Won't fill unless the market reaches your price — guarantees price but not execution.
See also: Market Order
A standing instruction that automatically closes your trade if the price moves against you past a level you set, capping your loss.
Also known as: SL
See also: Take Profit
A standing instruction that automatically closes your trade once the price moves in your favor to a level you set, locking in your gain.
Also known as: TP
See also: Stop Loss
P&L & performance
How gains and losses are measured.
The profit or loss locked in when you close a trade. It immediately affects your virtual balance.
See also: Closed Position
The "paper" profit or loss on a trade that's still open. It moves with the market and isn't locked in until you close.
See also: Open Position
The percentage gain or loss on a position relative to the capital you put into it. Used throughout UpsideOnly to compare performance fairly across different position sizes.
Also known as: Return on Investment
Market structure
The mechanics of how markets price and fill trades.
The Bid is the highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay; the Ask is the lowest price a seller is willing to accept. The gap between them is the spread.
See also: Spread
The gap between the bid and ask price on an asset. A tighter spread generally means a more liquid market.
What is a spread?
The spread is the small gap between the bid price (what you get when selling) and the ask price (what you pay when buying). It's why your entry/exit price may differ slightly from the price shown on screen (mid price between these two). This bid or ask price is what executes on market orders, both when you open at market and when you close at market. Orders that fill at a level you chose do not pay it: a limit entry fills at your limit price, and a stop loss or take profit fills at the level you set.
- Buy / Long position -> executes at the ask price (slightly higher than the displayed price)
- Sell / Short position -> executes at the bid price (slightly lower than the displayed price)
This spread reflects normal trading costs and liquidity — the spread is tighter for popular assets, and wider for less-traded ones.
See also: Liquidity, Bid and Ask, Market Order
The difference between the price you expected on a trade and the price you actually got. Happens most often with market orders in fast-moving or low-liquidity markets.
See also: Market Order, Liquidity
How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. High-liquidity assets (large-cap stocks, major forex pairs) trade with tight spreads and minimal slippage.
The smallest price increment an asset can move. Different markets have different tick sizes — equities tick in cents; some futures tick in fractions.
Using borrowed capital to control a larger position than your balance alone would allow. A 10x lever on $1,000 controls $10,000 of exposure; gains and losses scale accordingly.
See also: Margin
The collateral required to open a leveraged position. If your trade moves against you and erodes the margin, the position can be force-closed.
See also: Leverage
Payouts & money
How real-money rewards are calculated and paid.
A small refundable deposit (starting at $5) that makes you eligible for real payouts. Never used for trading and withdrawable anytime — exists to prevent bots from diluting the prize pool.
See also: Participation Deposit Tier
One of six tiers based on your deposit amount. Higher tiers apply a larger Priority Multiplier to your payout calculation.
Also known as: deposit tier
See also: Priority Multiplier, Bin
The multiplier applied to your payout based on your Participation Deposit Tier. Higher-tier depositors earn proportionally more for the same percentile rank.
See also: Participation Deposit Tier
One of four performance brackets that group users by their finish position in the cycle. Combined with your tier, this forms the 4-bin × 6-tier matrix that determines your share of the pool.
Also known as: performance bin
See also: Percentile Rank
Where you finished within a given competition cycle, expressed as a percentile. Determines which Bin you land in.
See also: Bin, Leaderboard
A real-money distribution sent to users when UpsideOnly's ML-driven trades are profitable. 50% of platform profits are shared with eligible users every cycle.
See also: Profit Sharing, Cycle
UpsideOnly's model of returning 50% of trading profits to top-performing users. Profits come from UpsideOnly's own capital being traded using signals derived from user paper-trade activity.
See also: ML Signal
Your real-money balance, separate from your virtual balance. Receives payouts and funds withdrawals.
See also: Virtual Balance, Withdrawal Eligibility
Cycles & competitions
How performance windows and prize pools work.
The defined window — weekly or monthly — over which performance is measured and payouts are calculated. Weekly cycles run Friday to Friday and settle at 5:00pm Eastern Time (ET) on the closing Friday; monthly jackpot cycles settle at the start of the following month.
Also known as: competition cycle
See also: Cycle Settlement
The automatic process that closes a cycle, ranks all eligible users, and credits real balances. Runs on a schedule — there is no manual claim step.
Also known as: payout distribution
The larger payout distributed at the start of each month, layered on top of weekly cycle payouts.
The public ranking of users by performance within a cycle. Top placements unlock Titles.
See also: Title, Percentile Rank
Account & security
Verification, protection, and account controls.
Identity verification required before payouts. UpsideOnly uses Light KYC for standard payouts and Full KYC with enhanced verification for larger payouts above certain thresholds.
Also known as: Know Your Customer, verification
A second verification step on login and sensitive actions. Required before you can confirm a payment method or initiate a withdrawal.
Also known as: two-factor authentication
Restarting your virtual balance to the $100,000 starting point. Resetting during an active cycle clears your pending payout eligibility for that cycle.
Also known as: balance reset
See also: Virtual Balance, Cycle
Gamification
Styles, streaks, titles, and progression.
A behavioral classification (e.g. Aggressive Scalper, Algorithmic Swing Trader) computed from your last 30 days of trades and updated every Sunday. You receive a primary and secondary style. "Still Developing" shows when you have fewer than 15 trades or signals aren't strong enough to classify yet; "Hybrid" shows when two styles score within 10 points of each other and means you're a genuine multi-strategy trader.
See also: XP
Consecutive profitable closed trades. Contributes to XP and unlocks achievements at milestones (3, 5, 10, 25, 50). Resets on the first losing trade.
See also: Daily Login Streak, Achievement
Consecutive days you log in to the platform. Contributes to XP and unlocks login-based achievements. Resets if you miss a day.
See also: Win Streak
A platform-wide point total earned through streaks, achievements, and other activities. XP feeds into your gamification progress alongside your trading performance.
Also known as: Experience Points
A permanent label earned by finishing in a top leaderboard placement, completing certain achievements, or through promotional events. You can display one title at a time on your profile, but all earned titles live in your Trophy Case.
See also: Trophy Case, Achievement
The section of your profile that displays every Title and Achievement you've ever earned, regardless of which title you currently have active.
See also: Title
Platform
The systems and infrastructure behind UpsideOnly.
Information derived from the collective paper-trade activity of all users, used by UpsideOnly's proprietary machine learning models to inform real trades made with platform capital.
Also known as: machine learning signal
See also: Profit Sharing
UpsideOnly's underlying brokerage infrastructure is delivered via the Perpetuals platform. The whitelabel hash identifies the UpsideOnly partner on that platform.
Your personal code that grants new signups a temporary tier boost when they use it. Find yours in account settings.
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