Big Figure

Things move fast on a trading desk. There's not a lot of time to waste. Spitting out figures while taking long pulls of Red Bull and constantly abusing a stress ball, traders don't have time for niceties, like greetings, small talk, or saying the full price for something they're trading.

So they often leave off the big figure. The big figure is the part of a price that can be taken for granted. The price of something can be given in dollars and cents. As long as the dollar value stays relatively constant, traders often give just the cents.

Say crude oil is trading at $65.80 per barrel. The bids and asks that set the price (See: Bid and Asked) will likely be very close together. Say, a bid of $65.79 and an ask of $65.81. When communicating these numbers, there's not a lot of value in including the "big figure"...$65 in this case. So instead, traders might just say "79" or "81," since, on an operational basis, this is the only number that matters.