A trader is person or entity, in finance, who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities, derivatives, and mutual funds in the capacity of agent, hedger, arbitrageur, or speculator.

Duties and types

Traders are either professionals (institutional) working in a financial institution or a corporation. They buy and sell financial instruments traded in the stock markets, derivatives markets and commodity markets, comprising the stock exchanges, derivatives exchanges and the commodities exchanges. Several categories and designations for diverse kinds of traders are found in finance, these may include:

  • Local trader
  • Floor trader
  • High-frequency trader
  • Pattern day trader
  • Rogue trader
  • Stock trader

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Trader (finance), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.