Glossary
Two things share a name, so start here.
foreteller, lowercase, is a funded trader: the person named on a seat as the one allowed to trade it. Foreteller, capitalised, is a different product, a public index of prediction-market traders, and the Foreteller score is a public score computed from a wallet's on-chain trading history. That score is not your challenge score, and the two are computed for different purposes. There is no trading bot called Foreteller anywhere in this product.
backer Someone who deposits into the shared pool and holds a share of it. Backers do not trade; their capital funds seats.
buffer Fortell's own cash, held in the pool alongside backer capital, which absorbs a funded seat's loss before it can reach backer money. See the first-loss buffer.
challenge The paid 14-day evaluation. It is not practice and it is not a simulation of something else: the environment you trade is the challenge.
challenge capital The starting balance of your challenge, equal to the seat you are trying to win, $500 or $1,500. Fixed by tier, so two traders taking the same trades get the same result.
claim Taking your share of a funded seat's profit. Splits 70 to you, 10 to Fortell, 20 to backers, in one transaction. See getting paid.
day The unit the daily loss limit resets on, the window is counted in, and the day-7 early-pass door opens after. A real day on mainnet, shorter in some beta cohorts. Your challenge records which. Whichever length it is, it is anchored to UTC: a mainnet day turns over at 00:00 UTC, the same instant everywhere, which is not your midnight unless you are on UTC. See about "a day".
drawdown How far you have fallen from the highest your equity has ever been, as a percentage of that peak. Not a percentage of what you started with.
drawdown floor The equity level at which a funded seat freezes. Its size minus its maximum drawdown, so $375 on a $500 Standard seat.
edge On one scored call, the outcome minus what you paid per share. Buy at 40 cents on something that resolves yes and your edge is +60 cents. The input to your forecast score.
equity Your challenge cash plus what your open positions are currently worth. It moves while a round is still running, rather than jumping at settlement.
flat Having nothing open. The only state in which a seat's cash is its true value, which is why deposits, withdrawals, settlement and profit claims are all allowed only when flat.
forecast score Your 0 to 100 challenge score. The lower end of a confidence interval around your average edge, shrunk when you have few calls. See how a challenge is graded.
frozen A funded seat that has breached its drawdown floor. It can still close positions, can never open new ones, and does not unfreeze.
high-water mark The highest a seat has ever been worth, which is what its drawdown floor is measured from. It only ratchets up, except that a profit claim resets it down to the seat's size at the same moment the profit leaves.
pooled seat A funded seat, meaning one whose capital came from the shared backer pool and returns to it. Distinct from a standalone vault, which is not part of the funded-trader product.
rail A hard limit on size or loss that refuses an order rather than warning about it. The challenge rails and the funded-seat rails are the same numbers. See the risk rails.
reserved The part of the buffer that live seats have already claimed against. Only the unreserved part may ever be withdrawn by Fortell.
scored call A resolved position that counts toward your call count and your forecast score: at least $0.50 of cost, not more than half hedged, and entered at least 30 seconds before the round resolved.
seat One funded account, its capital, and the risk limits written on it. One per funded trader, not shared.
settlement token The token everything is denominated in. USDC.
tier size The size of a funded seat, $500 or $1,500. Also your challenge capital, and the level a profit claim resets your seat back to.
trade-only delegate What you are on your own seat: allowed to trigger trades, never allowed to move money out. See who holds the money.