> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.hydravision.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.hydravision.ai/products/live-analytics-and-hydra-agent/live-analytics/before-you-start-the-key-ideas.md).

# Before you start: the key ideas

A handful of terms appear on every page. If you understand these, the rest follows.

| Term                     | What it means                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Grid**                 | One complete trading cycle run by the Hydra EA on one symbol in one direction. A grid opens with a first position, may add more positions as price moves, and eventually closes them all. Most of your analytics are measured *per grid*, not per trade.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| **Position**             | A single open trade inside a grid. A grid can hold one position or many.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| **Depth**                | How many positions a grid holds at once. **Max Depth** is the most it ever held. A depth of 1 means the grid closed on its first position without ever adding another.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| **Direction**            | **Buy** (B, green) or **Sell** (S, red). Each grid is one or the other.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| **Event**                | A moment when the EA closed one or more positions inside a grid. A grid usually has several events before it fully closes. Each event is tagged with the *engine* that triggered it (see below).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| **Engine**               | The part of the EA logic that decided to close positions. Every page uses the same names: **PCL Engines**, **PCL Inject**, **Position Hunter**, **Multi-Trailing**, **Bounce**, **Anchor SL**, **Frontier**, **Risk stop: max loss** and **Risk stop: step gap**. Older grids can also show **Dual Grid Hedge**, which is no longer part of the EA. A close that can't be matched to an engine shows as **Other**. Profit Attribution shows how much each engine contributed. |
| **Drawdown (DD)**        | How far below its high point something has fallen. Shown two ways: **account drawdown** (equity below its previous peak) and **grid drawdown** (the worst floating loss a single grid reached before it closed). Always shown in red; a smaller number is better.                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| **Net vs Gross**         | *Gross* is the raw trading profit. *Net* is after commission and swap have been taken off. When a figure is simply labelled "P\&L", it is net.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| **Volume / Lots**        | Trade size, in lots.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **Floating vs Realised** | *Floating* P\&L is on positions that are still open and can still change. *Realised* P\&L is locked in from positions that have closed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |

**Colours:** green is profit or good, red is loss or risk, amber is a neutral ratio or a caution. Grey means no data yet.

**Currency:** all money values are in your MT5 account currency.

**Dates and times:** shown in your local time, except where they are in UTC. The UTC ones are the *Grid P\&L by Hour* chart, the month, day and hour groupings in *Explore*, and Explore's **Opened between** filter. These are all labelled UTC. When a backtest is compared with live trading, the backtest's times are your broker's server time and the live times are UTC.

**Freshness:** data updates each time Hydra Agent syncs, which is every 2 minutes by default. When nothing on the account has changed, the agent checks five times less often until something changes: every 10 minutes at the default setting. After a quiet spell, figures can be up to about 10 minutes behind.

**Flat stretches:** balance and equity are recorded when they change, and at least once a day while nothing changes. The charts draw them as steps, so a flat line means nothing changed in that time.