A buck
Definition · Level 6 · Desk language
Keep reading with Tradecraft
You’ve read your 3 free definitions this month. Tradecraft explains all 738 terms and strategies, with the lessons that teach them, flashcards that come back before you forget, quizzes and a payoff lab.
FX, rates and bond-desk slang for one million (dollars or units of the currency traded). In an option or stock price it instead means 1.00 per share.
Example
“Ten bucks of the 5-year” = $10m; “a buck twenty” on an option = 1.20.
Rules and market figures change: check the current ones before relying on this.
Where Tradecraft teaches it
Level 6 · Desk language, in the lesson “Size and currency slang”: Bucks, yards, lots and the FX nicknames — plus what one pip is worth.
Related terms
- A yardOne billion, from the French “milliard” — used mainly in FX and rates so nobody confuses billion and million on a noisy line.
- AussieNickname for the Australian dollar and the AUD/USD pair.
- CableNickname for GBP/USD, after the transatlantic telegraph line that once carried the rate.
- FiberNickname for EUR/USD, the most traded currency pair in BIS surveys — heard mostly in retail and online commentary; bank desks usually just say “euro”.
- KiwiNickname for the New Zealand dollar and the NZD/USD pair.
- LoonieNickname for the Canadian dollar, after the bird on Canada's one-dollar coin; used loosely for USD/CAD, which desks also call “dollar-CAD” or “funds”.