noun
-
a person who engages in trade; dealer; merchant
-
a vessel regularly employed in foreign or coastal trade
-
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:
It makes the same fee whether a trader is right or wrong.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
His father, Percy, was a Jewish-British trader; his mother, Nelly, was the daughter of middle-class Viennese Jews.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
These days, every healthcare trader has to be a part-time AI specialist just to keep up.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
It added the new operator would manage their own trader arrangements independently.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
Perhaps the trader and his wife saw her leave, perhaps not.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
The Need To Know column presents ideas from professional investors and traders every morning when the stock market is open.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
He said traders were focused on the "daunting" amounts of global borrowing from governments and corporations, as well as increases in oil prices.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
The market’s quants, or process-driven traders and funds guided by algos, endured one of their worst days in recent memory on Wednesday when bets against certain stocks backfired.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
“I’ve been saying ‘bond traders can stop panicking when the Fed starts panicking,’” said Jim Bianco, president at Bianco Research.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
Word spread quickly in the small world of subprime mortgage bond creators and traders: AIG FP was now selling credit default swaps on triple-A-rated subprime bonds for a mere 0.12 percent a year.
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.
