These are terms we've (ab)used, along with explanations of what we mean. Investopia has a better one, let us know where you think we are way off. :-)
Active pick - A cycle that is in phase 1 or phase 2, and ready to be bought when conditions are right, AND money is available.
Active owned - A cycle that is in phase 3 or phase 4, and ready to be sold when conditions are right.
Analysis - The process of using a stock's quote history to optimize a cycle's parameter set.
Autoanalyze - The process of performing several analyses across a range of parameter values to determine what gives the best result across the stock history. It is simple to determine in hindsight, but it does not guarantee future performance. If the history is extensive enough, and the stock behavior is consistent enough, the hope is that the brackets from the analysis will capture the typical range in volatility of the stock.
Bracket - The engine sets brackets that specify prices above and below the current stock price. The bracketing defines the triggers for when the stock should be bought or sold.
Cycle - A stock that you have picked to be monitored by the engine. The engine will alternately buy and sell a quantity of the stock as bracket triggers are hit.
Inactive pick - A pick that is not currently being considered for buy. Quotes for the pick will still be monitored, building a history that can be used for analysis.
Inactive hold - An owned stock that is not currently being considered for sell. It will continue to be owned (taking up a percentage of your managed value) as long as the Hold status remains.
Leaderboard - The leaderboard displays user accounts, ranked by performance, best to last. Simulation accounts are always shown, and live trading accounts can be shown or hidden based on user preference. Usually at the end of the month, the user with the account with the highest score will earn $100 in live trading subscription credit. See the Terms of Service for rules.
Maximum owned stocks - The maximum number of stock cycles that the engine will allow to be owned at any given time. If you are at maximum, the engine will continue to monitor picks, but will not buy until after a sell occurs. Note that this number dictates the number of stocks purchased in each cycle. The cycle purchase value will be less than or equal to the managed value divided by the maximum owned stocks count.
Managed value - The amount of value (in USD) in your account that you want the engine to manage. This should be equal to or less than the account balance.
Parameter set - The set of adjustable parameters that define how the engine will trade the cycle.
Parameters preset - A set of parameters saved as a template that can be loaded into other cycles.
Phase 1 - Waiting for pick price to drop (ie, the first half of a bounce)
Phase 2 - Waiting for pick price to rise (ie, the second half of a bounce)
Phase 3a - Waiting for owned price to rise to profitability
Phase 3b - Waiting for owned price to drop to stop sell
Phase 4 - Waiting for slight drop to harvest profit from owned
Pick - A stock that you have selected to be monitored.
Pick shortage - An account has a pick shortage if there are not enough picks to reach the maximum owned stocks count.
Further explanation:
Your account's value is divided into several smaller buckets called cycles.
Each cycle trades against one symbol, typically bought, sold, and rebought again, as strike prices are hit.
The trading engine uses picks to make purchases, but not until the pick looks ripe. Therefore you should provide the engine with many picks for it to follow.
After a sell occurs, ideally the engine has identified multiple opportunities to buy. Your ranking will determine which of these opportunities is acted on first.
Pick surplus - An account has a pick surplus if there are extra picks available well above the maximum owned stocks count. In this case, the engine will have better opportunity to make purchases when cash is available.
Price - The price at which an execution was made per share of stock.
Ranking - Picks are ranked to indicate priority when the next buy opportunity arises. At that time, more than one pick may be "ripe", and the priority is used to choose which to purchase.
There are two categories of ranking:
manual - Manually ranked picks are used first, in the order set by you on the picks page
autoranked - Auto-ranked picks are used if there are no manual picks, following an auto-ranking algorithm defined by you in your profile
Rebuy type - The rebuy strategy to use as the cycle goes through buys and sells.
Available types:
Market = buy immediately when bracket triggers
Limit = after selling, put in a limit order at the given price
Limit as % = after selling, put in a limit order at the given percentage of the current price
Bounce = use a phase 1 and a phase 2 before buying
Rise = skip phase 1 and buy once the price rises to the target price
Spike protection - Often a single stock trade will occur at a price well outside the range of normal trading. Spike protection ignores these trades so they do not trigger inopportune buys and sells.
Subscriber - A subscriber has paid for access to the full set of available features on the site, including access to live trading. Subscribers are immune to user purges due to aggressive spam maintenance. They are also immune to the monthly purge of underperforming or inactive users.
Underallocated - Most of the value of your account is currently in cash. The engine is waiting for most of your picks to "ripen".
What you can do:
If you want to get more of your cash into the market, you can manually buy your favorite picks right now. If it is outside market hours, the engine will buy when the market next opens.
You can increase engine parameter aggressiveness if you feel like the engine is waiting too long. Go to the Charts page to do so.
If you do not want to invest any more of your cash, you may reduce the managed value on the Manage page.
To sum up: you should maximize the percentage of your value that is in play. Otherwise your cash is just sitting there.
Value - The value of a trade, calculated as the product of the price and the quantity.