Trader

One who...trades. Duh. Like Vic. Or Joe.

But...what does this even mean? If we own stocks (and 2/3 of the country does, in one form or another), then aren't we all traders? Well, kinda sorta. But there exist a few key delineations.

Trading implies a lot of movement (when you trade stocks or goods, in fact, you're doing it daily-ish, whereas when you invest, you're buying a given security and holding it for years, if not decades). So what then does a trader...do? Well, in the professional trenches, a typical trader runs a "book," or investment portfolio, which takes advantage of inefficiently priced stocks, bonds, and derivatives therein. They trade; they don't invest. The moment their cash is deployed, they're already thinking about how to turn that trade into more cash than they invested. Like...tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month.

Vast difference from an investor who pays 10% of an early-stage tech company and says, "Call me next decade after you've been public a few years; maybe then I'll think about selling."