The Ultimate Guide to Stock Market Slangs and "Lingo"

Are you confused about certain terms when browsing for stock information?
Are you curious about particular words in social news?
Are you puzzled when choosing stocks based on analysts' reports?
Take it easy, mooers! We all know that many hands make light work. The joint efforts of all of you have finally yielded great results. Why don't you follow me to take a look at the terms from your fellow mooers? You may become a "stock expert" if you learn all those terms!

Firstly, let's look at the frequently appeared terms in social news or media. Mastering those terms may help you feel smooth and unhindered while browsing investment content or communicating with other investors.

Communication in the stock market
YOLO - You only live once.
MOASS - Mother of all short squeezes.
Diamond Hands - A trader with diamond hands never sells.
Paper hands - sells easily.
DD - Due Diligence,done research on a stock or market trend.
ATH - All time high.
Buy the dip - Buy into a stock after it's fallen, in the hopes of it rising out of its slump.
To the moon - Stock rising in price or their belief that a stock will rise in price.
Tendies - Collecting money after their investment made a profit.
Stonks - Volatile stocks hyped up on Reddit.
Ape - Investors from WSB, or loving AMC and GME.
FUD - Fear, uncertainty and doubt or Fake useless data.
ATL - All time Low.
LTI - Long term investor.
FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out .
HODL - Hold On For Dear Life.
Shrills - Investors/Traders who spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Apes together strong - GME and AMC long term investors.
ATM - At the money. A situation where an option's strike price is identical to the current market price of the underlying security.

Secondly, understanding the basic terms may help you take a step further to success.

Basic terms in the market
Ask - The highest price a buyer will pay to buy a specified number of shares of a stock at any given time.
Bid - The lowest price at which a seller will sell the stock.
Ask-Bid Spread - The difference between what people want to spend and what people want to get.
Call Option - Gives the buyer the right but not the obligation to buy an underlying asset at the strike price on or before the expiry date.
Put Option - Gives the buyer the right but not the obligation to sell an underlying asset at the strike price on or before the maturity date.
Long - buying a share and hoping for the price to go up.
Short - Selling the shares to someone else, without holding the shares at the firstplace.
52-Week High/Low - The 52-week high and low for a stock represents the highest closing price and the lowest closing price the stock has traded at over a 52-week period.
After-Hours Trading - Buying and selling of stocks that takes place after normal trading hours.
Analyst Ratings - “Buy”, “Sell”, and “Hold” are an evaluation of a stock's expected performance and/or it's risk level as determined by a rating agency or brokerage firm.
Average daily trading volume -  A calculation that identifies the number of individual securities traded over a specified amount of time, divided by the number of days in that time period.
PEG (P/E Growth) - Used as a refinement of the standard P/E ratio that is used in fundamental analysis.
PE (Price to Earnings Ratio) - Its current share price relative to its per-share earnings. The ratio is used in valuing companies.
ROA (Return On Assets) - One of several profitability measures that investors use to measure their return on investment (ROI).
ROE (Return on Equity) - Measurement of how efficient a company is in using its assets from their shareholders to create earnings.
ROI (Return on Investment) - A performance measurement that shows your profit on an investment as a percentage of your overall investment.
Capital Gains - An increase in value between the price an asset (such as real estate or stocks) is sold for and the price that an investor paid for the asset.
Channel Trading - Channel trading is a trading strategy that relies on technical analysis based on defined trading channels created by price movement patterns.
Conference Calls - An event that allows companies to provide information to any interested party.

Special terms in the SG market
Chiong Chiong Chiong - Share price flying.
Salted fish - Hanging dry to die.
No road - No idea or dead end of what coming next.
Lim kopi - Taking profit.
Fish up - Buying at Low price.
Bo Mia - Huge losses.

Bear, bull, rhino, unicorn? Why do so many animals appear in the stock market? What do they represent? No worries. You will find some answers as you continue reading.

Must-knows in the market
Bear Market - The industry-specific jargon which indicates a downward trend in the overall condition of the market.
Bull Marke - The exact opposite of Bear Market. It means that the market is on an upward spiral.
Stock market crash - A sharp plunge in the major stock market indexes over a short period.
Stock market volatility - When stock market prices fluctuate very sharply.
Black swans - An event which is outside the realm of prior expectations, but which carries an extreme impact, and is prone to post-rationalisation in order to explain its occurrence.
Grey rhinos - A high-impact, high-probability event that for various reasons is usually ignored by investors and policy makers.
Unicorn - A startup that is privately-owned with a valuation exceeding $1 billion.
Whales - Any individual or company who has enough money and power to directly influence the price of a stock.
Blue Chip - The well-recognized company with good reputation.
Penny stock - The stock of a small company that trades for less than $5 per share. In the past, means any stocks that traded for less than one dollar per share.
Cyclical stock - Underlying business generally follows the economic cycle of expansion and recession.
Non-cyclical stocks - Secular or defensive stocks that don't have those big swings in demand. Eg. grocery store chains.
Growth stocks - Companies that are growing their share prices, revenue, profits or cash flow at faster rates than the market at large. Profits from the rapid price appreciation.
Income/dividend stocks - Stocks that pay dividend, more mature business models and have less long-term opportunities for growth.
Preferred Stock - A class of stock that has a higher (or preferred) claim to the assets and earnings of a corporation than owners of common stock.
FAANG Stocks - an acronym for five individual companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
Breakout Stocks - Trading breakout stocks is a popular strategy of active investors.
Float - The number of shares that a company issues that are available for trading on secondary markets without restriction.
Gap Down Stocks - Opens at a lower level, often signified by a sharp price move, with no other trading occurring before or after, therefore creating a price gap.
Gap Up Stocks - Opens at a higher level, often signified by a sharp move, with no other trading occurring before or after the gap.
Most Active Stocks - The list of most active stocks can be a useful guide for investors
Volatile stocks - Companies that have had large price swings, leading to a significant gap between these companies' intraday highs and intraday lows.
REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) - Made up of a number of real estate companies that own a portfolio of income-producing real estate assets.
ETF (Exchange-Traded Funds) - A pooled investment vehicle that has some of the attributes of owning individual stocks and some attributes of owning a mutual fund or an index fund.

You've made it this far. Good job! Would you like to know the professional terms that institutions or investors use in the market?

Stock trading styles
Buyback - A company repurchases their shares in the marketplace.
Hedge Funds - Using a pool of funds from investors who meet certain criteria in an effort to achieve a positive absolute return for their investors.
Index Funds - A type of mutual fund that includes a portfolio of equities designed to match or track a specific market index.
IPO (Initial Public Offering) - A formal process in which a previously private company for the first time raises money through the sale of shares to institutional (and on rare occasions) retail investors on a major stock exchange.
Mutual Funds - A company that combines money from multiple investors and invests those funds into securities that are dictated by the fund’s prospectus.
Day Trading - The practice of buying and selling securities within a single day.
Dollar Cost Averaging - An investment strategy where an investor buys a fixed dollar amount of a security at regular intervals regardless of the price.
Insider Trading - The action of buying or selling (“trading”) a security based on material information that is not available to the public.
LBO (Leveraged Buyout) - A financial transaction, an acquisition of a company that is financed almost entirely by debt.
Margin - Collateral that a trader supplies to a broker in order to trade currencies, commodities, futures, and marginable stocks.
Market Timing - An investing and trading strategy that involves shifting the assets inside a portfolio to take advantage of pricing inequities within different asset classes.
Momentum Investing - A trading strategy that requires investors to identify chart patterns for indications of stocks that are riding a trend.
Options Trading - The sale of a contract between a buyer and a seller in which the buyer of the contract is purchasing the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a quantity of a security at a specified price on or before a specified date.
Range Trading - A trading strategy based on technical analysis of price movement between a defined level of support and resistance.
Short Selling - The sale of a security, such as a stock, not owned by the seller or that the seller has borrowed.

Let's imagine that you're reading an analyst's report or analyzing a specific stock or index. You may encounter terms that are too difficult to comprehend.

Analytical terms
Compound Annual Growth Rate - The compound annual growth rate is a value that represents the arithmetic mean of an investment’s annual growth rate over a specified period of time.
Compound Interest - The interest calculated on an additional principal balance that includes not only the interest on the principal but also the interest on all the interest that has accumulated in the previous period.
Correction - A statistical event where the price of a security or asset class experiences a decline of at least 10% (although it could be more) from its most recent peak.
Death Cross - A technical chart pattern that indicates an asset has the potential to be exposed to major selling pressure.
Discount Rate - The interest rate the Federal Reserve Banks charge to financial institutions who borrow money from their overnight discount window.
Dividend - Companies who redistribute a portion of their profits to their shareholders on a regular basis.
Earnings Per Share- An investment metric determines a company's profit divided by its number of common outstanding shares.
Earnings Reports - Part of the legal requirements that publicly held companies must meet to disclose their company’s performance.
Depreciation - An accounting practice that allows a company to record.
Derivative - A contractual agreement between two parties.
Risk Tolerance - The measurement of an investor’s willingness to accept a degree of variability in their investment returns.
Price Target - A price target is an investment analyst’s or adviser’s estimate of the future price level of an asset.
Golden Cross - The technical indicator that can be seen on a candlestick chart when a relatively short-term moving average crosses a long-term moving average.
Special Dividends - A cash payment made by a company to its shareholders that is separate from any regular dividend the company is currently paying.
Support Level - A technical indicator of price movement. When an asset is said to be at a support level, it has reached a price floor.

Now you've arrived at the perfect ending! Thank you so much for your time. Once again, big thanks to mooers who contributed the terms, slangs, and "lingo". Did you learn anything new today? Feel free to leave some comments to let us know.