noun
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a person who engages in trade; dealer; merchant
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a vessel regularly employed in foreign or coastal trade
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stock exchange a member who operates mainly on his or her own account rather than for customers' accounts
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of trader
Explanation
A trader is a person who either buys goods and resells them, like a merchant who runs a store or a person who buys and sells stocks and bonds. The original meaning of trader was "one engaged in commerce," meaning someone who makes a living buying things and selling them at a profit. Originally, traders would literally trade goods for other goods, while today most of them trade goods for money. Financial traders work solely with money, buying and selling currency, stocks, bonds, and funds.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Among them is 17-year-old Tomo, who had been planning to study finance and economics as he had always wanted to be a trader.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026
The miner and trader has a 2026 earnings tailwind due to elevated and volatile commodity markets, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
At the event, her bio read: “former trader, current underemployed felon.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
“It’s starting to edge into that restrictiveness zone where it’s going to begin to exert downward pressure on risk assets and economic activity,” said Joseph Purtell, a portfolio manager and rates trader at Neuberger Berman.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
Grandpa wasn’t only a storekeeper; he was a trader, too, and a good one.
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
Meanwhile, the estimated share of female traders has grown by about 40% over the past year, and women made up two-thirds of new users who wagered on “Love Island.”
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
However, traders appear reluctant to fully price in that outlook because the recent increase in Middle East exports may not be sustainable, he added.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
The tepid performance comes amid long-running uncertainty among traders over the Middle East crisis, which has fanned energy costs and in turn pushed inflation higher -- putting pressure on central banks to hike interest rates.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
Young traders are also getting rich betting on things like Rotten Tomatoes scores and the papacy.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
He further explained that the traders at UBS who executed the trade were motivated mainly by their own models—which, at the moment of the trade, suggested they had turned a profit of $30 million.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
