A Boomer's Guide To WSB's LingoI’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years.
I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails.
They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way.
The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades.
WallStreetBets Lingo
I wanted to do a special episode today that’s for us, the older people. The Boomers, The Gen X, & well, basically everybody above 40.
See, it has been such a crazy week. There has been insane volatility and volume on stocks like GME , AMC , BB , and then recently Silver.
Most of it has been in the hands of the WallStreetBets crowd, and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with what exactly these folks are saying on the WallStreetBets forum.
I mean, they’re using terms like “tendies,” “YOLO,” and “boomers.” So today I want to help you and me to cut through the noise and define some of the terms that you might be seeing on WallStreetBets if you’ve been going to this forum.
GME & WallStreet Bets Recap
Now, before I do this, let’s take a minute to recap what’s been going on. You see, WallStreetBets is a popular forum on Reddit with millions of followers.
At the time of this writing, they have now about 8.2 million followers. That’s up from around 2 million at the beginning of the week.
They decided to go after hedge funds, especially short-sellers, and chose a few heavily shorted stocks as targets and drove prices up.
Now, ultimately, these short-sellers are the ones who are mocking the small account traders, had to close their positions at a massive, massive loss.
Now the most famous being talked about is (GME) which is GameStop.
Wow! It went from around $40 all the way up to $418, but then the stock went down, mainly because of the extreme limitations that online brokers put on the stock.
Robinhood, for example, was only allowing traders to buy 20 shares of (GME). I mean, come on, that’s a joke.
WallStreetBets Lingo
Now back to why I’m writing this article. You might have been peeking into the WallStreetBets forum to see what’s going on, and you may have been confused by all the terms they’re using.
This is why I want to show you the ten most common terms that you’ll see on this forum, and I’ll explain to you what they mean.
1. STONKS
Now, “stonks” started as a meme a few years back and was used in reaction to what others thought were bad trading stock choices.
Now on WallStreetBets, it is used as a more general term for stocks that they might be trading.
2. NEWBIE
The term “newbie” is an easy one, and it refers to a rookie trader who is new to trading.
3. BOOMER
Now, we are talking again about boomers and a “boomer” is what the WallStreetBets crowd used to describe an older person.
Somebody actually called me a boomer. I thought that being 51 years old made me apart of Gen X, but I guess boomer has become more of a generic term for anyone over 40 or so, at least in the WallStreetBets forums.
4. BAGHOLDER
Now, another popular term being thrown around is “bagholder.” What are bagholders here? Bagholders are traders who have taken a heavy loss in a stock.
In other words, they’re left holding the bag. In the WSB's forum somebody said,
“Glad I found a WSB, I like the stock, and all of you guys and I don’t mind being the bagholder now or in the end.”
This is a person was suffering a pretty massive loss, and this is what would be referred to as a “bagholder.”
5. TENDIES
You may have also seen “tendies” being used quite a bit, and tendies refer to the profits a trader makes off a stock.
Traders like to use that chicken or drumstick emoji when they’re talking about tendies.
There was an awesome individual, on the forum who posted that they were using some of their GME tendies to buy Nintendo switches from GameStop and then donated them to a children’s hospital, which I think is amazing.
6. YOLO
One that you may have already heard is “YOLO,” and it’s an acronym for You Only Live Once.
Someone in the forum said,
“Just YOLO’d 330k dollars to keep this party going to the moon.”
We’ll talk about “to the moon” here in a moment. I’ve also seen it used like,
“Hey, I just wired it, I yolo’d it.”
You only live once, right?
7. DIAMOND HANDS
Number 7 on this list is “Diamond Hands.” When somebody mentions diamond hands, it means that they’re holding their position no matter what.
Even when they are suffering through some massive drawdowns, so the diamond and the hand emojis are also used in reference for diamond hands.
One of the most famous diamond hands on WallStreetBets, is someone who posted a $5,000,000 loss, but overall, he still nicely up.
But, hey, look, that is a big loss. This is where you need diamond hands, right?
8. PAPER HANDS
So now, on the other hand, and this is where we go to term number eight, which is the term “paper hands.” So what are paper hands?
It’s the opposite of diamond hands, meaning if someone has paper hands, they’re nervous, and they sell their position instead of holding it.
So these are the people who are selling GameStop right now. All right.
9. APES
So now, on the other hand, and this is where we go to term number eight, which is the term “paper hands.” So what are paper hands?
It’s the opposite of diamond hands, meaning if someone has paper hands, they’re nervous, and they sell their position instead of holding it.
So these are the people who are selling GameStop right now. All right.
9. APES
So you’ll see things like “apes stay strong” or also sometimes you’ll see “I’m happy that I’m with you degenerates” because this is what they are referring to themselves in this community.
So it basically means that this is a community, and they’re in this together.
10. TO THE MOON
Now, the last one here is “to the moon.” that already mentioned.
So to the moon is their profit target, right?
“Volume is low. Don’t believe the news. GME is going to the moon.”
and this profit target is fairly wide open.
For GME at some point, the target was defined at a thousand.
This is a very, very high-profit target, which seems to be “the moon” they’re referring to, and traders are also using the Rocketship emoji to reference to the moon.
So these are the top 10.
Summary
Me personally, I am staying away from these crazy stocks, or stonks, right?
They’re fun to watch, but I personally prefer SRC profits. So what does this mean?
It means profits that are Systematic, Repeatable, and Consistent.
I know sounds super boring, but you see, it works very well for me.
I’m getting too old for the YOLO mentality, you only live once.
And you see, just yesterday I wired my January profits from my trading account into my checking account. It was a little bit over $21,000.
Boring? Yes, but it pays the bills, right?
