The introducing-broker glossary.
The words of the IB business, each defined once, plainly, and linked to where the Journal explains it in depth.
A
- Affiliate
A partner paid by a broker for sending it customers — usually once per qualified sign-up — whose relationship with the customer typically ends at the referral.
- Audience concentration
How evenly a following is spread across accounts: the sum of each account's squared share of total followers, known as the Herfindahl–Hirschman index.
B
- Bidirectional text
Text that mixes right-to-left and left-to-right runs, such as an Arabic sentence containing a Latin handle or ticker. Browsers order it with the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.
C
- Copy trading
A service that replicates another trader's trades in a follower's own account, usually automatically, so the follower's results follow someone else's decisions.
- Cost per acquisition
A one-off payment a broker makes to an IB for each referred client who meets set qualifying conditions, such as a minimum first deposit and minimum lots traded.
E
- Engagement rate
The share of an audience that interacts with a post — commonly likes plus comments on a post, divided by the account's followers.
- Evidence gate
The name Gravity uses for its rule that a website prints only claims it can trace to a source; an unverified claim is held back and never renders.
F
- Financial promotion
A communication, made in the course of business, that invites or induces someone to invest. In the UK only an authorised firm may make one, or approve one that someone else makes.
- Finfluencer
A social media personality who promotes financial products or shares views on investing with their followers — activity that financial promotion and advice rules can reach.
H
- Hybrid IB plan
An IB plan that pays part of the CPA upfront for each qualifying client, then a rebate on their trading set lower than the pure rebate plan's rate.
I
- IB rebate
A fixed amount a broker pays an IB for each lot their referred clients trade, for as long as those clients trade. Usually tiered by volume or client count.
- Introducing broker
A person or firm that refers clients to a broker and is paid on the business those clients bring, without holding client money or executing trades.
L
- Lot
The unit in which trade size is counted. A standard forex lot is 100,000 units of the base currency; a mini lot is a tenth of that and a micro lot a hundredth.
P
- Partner agreement
The contract between a broker and an IB that sets how the IB is paid, which clients and trades count, what the IB may say, and what happens when it ends.
R
- Right-to-left (RTL)
A writing direction in which lines start at the right edge and run leftward, as in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew. A right-to-left web page mirrors its layout to match.
- Risk warning
A plain statement, placed where it cannot be missed, that a financial product can lose the reader money — for leveraged products, often in a form set by a regulator.
S
- Spread
The difference between the bid price, at which a trader can sell, and the ask price, at which they can buy. It is part of the cost of every trade.
- Sub-IB
An introducing broker recruited by another IB. The sub-IB is paid on their own clients; the recruiting IB earns an override on those clients, paid by the broker.
Brand, website and creative, made for introducing brokers.
Gravity turns an IB's own profile into a brand direction, a website and the creative they advertise with — in Arabic, Persian or English.