If you are following the Gamestop short squeeze, you have no doubt visited r/wallstreetbets and r/GME on Reddit. The slang and vocabulary is different to other slang used in financial English, so don't be surprised if you can't find these words in a financial English glossary. This is our guide to r/wallstreetbets slang.
But first..
What's a short squeeze?
Selling short is when a hedge fund sells a borrowed share and hopes that the price goes lower so that they can in the future buy the share at a cheaper price before returning it to its owner.
A short squeeze is something happens when a hedge fund suddenly finds that the stock they sold short is now increasing in value, and other investors are refusing to sell their shares until it reaches a very high price. This happened in 2008 when Porsche slowly bought shares in Volkswagen to protect their partner from a takeover. Porsche knew Volkswagen was shorted by hedge funds. In an annual meeting Porsche announced that they were recalling shares which a day later caused the price to skyrocket. The same thing is expected to happen with Gamestop.
Slang used on r/wallstreetbets
| Vocabulary | Definition | Origin / Further explanation |
| Trading | Trading is making well defined profits off of price fluctuations that are less in tune with "fundamentals". | |
| Investing | Investing is buying and holding a company for the next few months, years, etc. | |
| Binary Events |
Binary events are tradeable events like earnings reports, clinical trial outcomes, PDUFA approvals, etc. |
|
| PDUFA | PDUFA dates are deadlines for the FDA to approve new drugs. | |
| Faggots Delight | A faggots delight is an OTM/ATM option that is close to expiry. It is unlikely to be in the money.. | Faggot is slang for a male homosexual |
| Bagholder | There's a really smart guy who sold all his shares at the top. That smart guy sold his shares to an idiot. That idiot is a bagholder. | |
| Bullish | Expecting the price to rise | |
| Bearish | Expecting the price to fall | |
| Bid Price | The maximum price a buyer is willing to pay | |
| Ask Price | The minimum price a seller is willing to receive. | |
| Spread | The spread is the difference between the bid and the ask. | |
| Retard | It means you are stupid and don't know what you're doing | This is actually a very politically incorrect word meaning intellectually challenged. It is not normally used in the 21st century. |
| Autistic | Use autistic to describe someone that actually does due diligence and knows what they are doing | Autism is a developmental condition where someone could have very advanced mathematical or intellectual skills, but might have difficulty communicating with he outside world. |
|
Diamond Hands ?✋ |
It means you never sell because you are confident in the stock. Your hands are made of diamonds | |
| Toilet Paper Hands ?✋ | You sell at the slightest red tick because you're overleveraged and are scared. | |
| In Scrambles | When somebody has made a poor decision and is regretting it | |
| Europoors | When the European stock markets open up and they start selling because they lack economic stimulus. | |
| Ameririch | When US stock markets open and they buy up what Europoors sold | |
| YOLO | $400 into GME weeklies is not a YOLO. A YOLO should be atleast 4 digits and represent 98-100% of your account | |
| $ROPE | What you buy when you make a poor decision | |
| Smooth Brain | The grooves in your brain determines your intelligence. To have a smooth brain means to have no grooves which means you're retarded. | |
| FOMO | Fear Of Missing Out | |
| Guh | when you account goes from $4000 to $0 in 30 seconds | |
| DD | Due Diligence - it means doing your homework on a specific stock or the overall market | |
| BTFD | Buy the f***ing dip | |
| Tendies | Profits from selling | Short for chicken tenders |
| Mooning ??? | Either means a stock went up 0.05% or 600% | |
| Drilling | Either means a stock went down -0.05% or -50% | |
| "We like the stock" | Meme popularized by Jim Cramer when he tried to (badly) imitate Wallstreetbets users | Jim Cramer is a presenter on CNBC, a news channel that broadcasts heavily biased market information sponsored by hedge funds and market makers. |
| SEC | Stock market police | The Securities and Exchange Commission |
| Gay bears ?? | People who are happy when stocks go down | |
| Bulls / Big Dongus Crew ? | People who are happy when stocks go up | Dongus is slang for penis. |
| Silver Surfers ? | People that invest in silver commodity | |
| Pajama Traders | People who trade futures or those that trade premarket | Pajamas (USA) or pyjamas (UK) are clothes worn for sleeping. |
| Ladder attack | Hitting the bids, algo trading, High Frequency Trading | A computer programme offers fractionally lower and lower prices to artificially lower a shares price. It is another type of shorting a stock. |
| Melvin | Melvin Capital is a hedge fund managed by Gabriel Plotkin | Melvin made a bad decision to short sell $GME. |
| Citadel | Citadel Securities is a market maker owned by Kenneth Griffin. | Citadel is a market maker under investigation by the SEC for being engaged in dishonest market practices, eg paying for order flow, trading in dark pools etc. |
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