Slang

Ape in

To buy a position quickly and without research, usually a large one, on enthusiasm or a tip.

Bagholder

Someone stuck holding a position that has fallen far below their entry, usually because they refused to take the loss when it was small.

Bear / bearish

A trader who expects prices to fall; a bear market is a decline of 20% or more from a high.

Bear trap

A breakdown below support that reverses sharply, trapping short sellers and stopping out longs just before the rally.

Blow-off top

A steep, near-vertical final surge at the end of a long rally, on huge volume, followed by a sharp reversal.

Blown up

Losing all or nearly all of an account, usually in a short period, through oversized positions or a refusal to take a loss.

Bull / bullish

A trader who expects prices to rise; a bull market is a sustained uptrend, conventionally 20% or more off a low.

Bull market genius

Someone whose apparent skill is entirely the market going up, usually discovered when it stops.

Bull trap

A breakout above resistance that fails quickly, trapping buyers who chased it above a level that now becomes resistance again.

Buy the dip

Purchasing an asset after a decline in the belief that the larger uptrend will resume.

Capitulation

The point in a decline where holders give up and sell all at once, producing a high-volume flush that often marks a low.

Chop

Directionless, noisy price action that repeatedly reverses, stopping out both longs and shorts.

Copium

Cope plus opium; the rationalisations traders inhale to avoid accepting a loss or a mistake.

Crab market

A market moving sideways, going neither up nor down - crabs walk sideways.

Dead cat bounce

A brief rally in a falling asset that quickly fails and gives way to new lows.

Degen

Short for degenerate gambler; a self-applied badge in speculative communities for someone who takes deliberately reckless positions.

Diamond hands

Holding a position through extreme volatility and losses without selling, celebrated in meme-stock and crypto communities.

Doubling down

Adding the same size again to a losing position, usually framed as conviction and usually driven by the loss.

Dumb money

Retail participants as a group, assumed to be late and wrong - a label that is partly supported and heavily overused.

Dump

A sharp, fast move lower, or the act of selling a large position quickly.

Falling knife

A price in fast, steep decline; buying one is the classic way to be early and wrong at the same time.

Finfluencer

A social media personality who publishes market opinions and trading content, usually monetised through courses, subscriptions, affiliate links, or promotion.

FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)

Negative information or rumor spread about an asset, sometimes to push the price down and sometimes a dismissive label for legitimate criticism.

Full port

Committing the entire portfolio to one position, leaving no capital for anything else and no room for being wrong.

Gain porn

Screenshots of large profits posted for attention, which distort everyone's sense of what normal results look like.

Gamma squeeze

A rally amplified by market makers buying stock to hedge the call options they sold, as rising prices increase the calls' delta.

Grinding

Either a market moving slowly in one direction without impulse, or a trader accumulating small consistent gains.

HODL

Crypto slang for holding through volatility rather than selling, originating from a misspelled forum post in 2013.

Hopium

Hope as an intoxicant; holding a failing position on optimism with no supporting evidence.

Liquidity grab

A quick move beyond an obvious level that triggers resting stops, followed by a reversal back through it.

Loss porn

Posting large losses for entertainment, common in speculative forums, where it functions as both honesty and a way to make ruin look funny.

Lottos

Cheap, far out-of-the-money, short-dated options bought for a large payoff at very low probability.

Melt-up

A steep, accelerating advance driven by participants chasing rather than by new fundamentals.

Minnow

A small holder, the counterpart to a whale - someone whose trades move nothing.

Moon (mooning, to the moon)

A dramatic, parabolic price rise; something that mooned went up enormously.

NGMI

Not going to make it - used to dismiss someone whose behaviour or conviction is judged inadequate, often for selling.

Paper hands

Selling at the first sign of trouble or a small profit; the opposite of diamond hands.

Parasocial guru

A trading personality the audience feels they know personally, which converts entertainment into trust that was never earned.

Permabear

Someone who is bearish in all conditions, whose eventual correctness in a downturn is presented as foresight.

Permabull

Someone who is bullish in all conditions, so their view carries no information about the current market.

Printing

Making money quickly and easily, as if the account were a printer; also, a trade or price appearing on the tape.

Pump

A sharp, promoted advance in price driven by coordinated buying and hype rather than by information.

Pump and dump

A scheme where promoters inflate a thin asset's price with hype and coordinated buying, then sell to the buyers they attracted.

Rekt

Wrecked - suffering a severe loss, most often through leverage or liquidation.

Resulting

Poker slang for judging a decision purely by its result; borrowed by traders as shorthand for the same error.

Revenge size

Increasing position size specifically to recover a loss, which turns one bad trade into an account event.

Rip

A sharp, fast move higher; to rip is to rally hard.

Ripping

Moving sharply higher with force and little hesitation.

Rug pull

A scam where a token's creators drain the liquidity or dump their holdings after attracting buyers, leaving the token worthless.

Rugged

Having been on the receiving end of a rug pull - the project's insiders sold or withdrew liquidity, collapsing the price.

Scared money

Trading with capital you cannot afford to lose, which distorts every decision through the need for this trade to work.

Sell the rip

Selling into a sharp rally, on the view that the strength is temporary - the mirror of buy the dip.

Sending it

Executing a trade decisively and without hesitation, often with the implication that little analysis was involved.

Shakeout

A sharp adverse move that removes weakly committed holders before the original direction resumes.

Shill

To promote a position or project to benefit your own holdings, or the person doing it.

Short squeeze

A rapid rally driven by short sellers being forced to buy back shares, which pushes price higher and forces more covering.

Signal group

A paid or free chat where someone posts entries and exits for others to copy - which transfers the decisions without transferring any skill.

Size up

To increase position size - legitimate when it follows a rule, and one of the most common places a plan quietly dies when it does not.

Smart money

Institutional or professional participants assumed to be better informed - a useful label that is often used far beyond what anyone can actually observe.

Squeezed

Being forced out of a position by an adverse move, particularly a short forced to cover into rising prices.

Stonks

Deliberately misspelled stocks, used ironically to describe equity speculation that is not being taken seriously.

Stop hunt

A move that pushes just past an obvious level where many stops sit, triggers them, and then reverses.

Strong hands

Holders who can sit through volatility without selling, usually because of size, time horizon, and a thesis they can restate.

Tanking

Falling sharply and persistently.

Tendies

Profits. From chicken tenders, via a long-running forum joke about being rewarded for good behaviour.

Theta gang

Traders whose approach is selling options to collect time decay - the self-described opposite of buying lottos.

Tourist

A participant who arrives in a market during its exciting phase and leaves when it stops being fun.

WAGMI

We are all going to make it - a solidarity slogan in speculative communities, used sincerely and ironically.

Weak hands

Holders who sell easily under pressure, usually because they are oversized, late, or without a thesis.

Whale

An individual or entity holding enough of an asset that their trades move the market.

Whipsaw

A quick move in one direction followed by an equally quick reversal, catching traders on both sides.

YOLO

You only live once - putting an outsized share of an account into one speculative position, usually short-dated options or high leverage.

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