Break Even

Break even is the point at which a trade produces neither a profit nor a loss once it's closed. You get out at essentially the same price you got in, so the money you put at risk comes back to you largely intact.

In practice this happens in a few ways. A trader might close a full position at the entry price, or close part of it (a "partial") and leave the rest running with a stop set at entry, so that even if the remainder later gets stopped out, the trade as a whole nets to roughly zero. Another common version is moving a stop-loss order (an instruction to exit automatically if price moves against you) up to the entry price after a trade has moved favorably, so the worst-case outcome from that point on is breaking even rather than taking a full loss.

The nuance that trips people up is that "break even" rarely means exactly zero. Commissions, exchange fees, spread (the small gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at), and slippage (getting filled at a slightly worse price than intended) all eat into the trade. So a position closed at the exact entry price often still shows a small net loss once costs are counted. Traders sometimes say "scratch" a trade to mean closing it flat, which carries the same caveat.

It's also worth separating break even as an outcome (how a trade actually finished) from break even as a level (a specific price you've calculated in advance, such as the entry price plus commissions, that price needs to reach for you to be flat). Both uses are common, and context usually makes clear which one is meant.