trade up

British  

verb

1. (intr, adverb) to sell a small or relatively inexpensive house, car, etc, and replace it with a larger or more expensive one

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trade up Idioms  

1. see under trade down.

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Example Sentences

The announcement seemed to breathe a bit of life into some names of the AI trade: shares of Microsoft regained their losses from earlier in the day to trade up 0.3%.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 12, 2026

Gold futures in New York trade up 2.25% at $5,091.80 after surging past $5,000 a troy ounce Friday.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 26, 2026

Current homeowners who locked in 3% mortgages a few years ago can’t afford to move even into a lower-priced house, let alone trade up, even though home loan rates are down to 6%.

From Barron's • Jan. 16, 2026

Amphenol shares initially dropped 6.6% after Nvidia unveiled its cable-free Rubin AI chip platform, but recovered to trade up 0.7%.

From Barron's • Jan. 6, 2026

Simple enough; but this trade up and down the Atlantic coast was part of a much larger world system.

From "Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science" by Marc Aronson