> Home > News Index

2006-11-08 - Euphemisms for share price movements

In Market catches breath after record pace I can see a huge variety of euphemisms for share price rises and falls.

Let's categorise them ...

Falls
  1. fell x 2
  2. dropped
  3. reversed x 3
  4. dumped x 2
  5. gave away
  6. backtracked
  7. sagged
  8. eased
  9. off
  10. descended
  11. poorer
  12. stepped back
Rises
  1. jumped x 2
  2. rose x 2
  3. firmed
  4. heavier
  5. surged
  6. up
Unchanged
  1. steady x 2

That's quite a swag of terms. Each one holds some connotations - like "reversed" would imply that the stock price had gone down soon after a rise. But ultimately aren't these words all talking about the same thing - the share price dropped? I wonder if there's any meaning in those words or if the author simply has a list of synonyms and chooses them at random, for variety.

The whole article could have been written much more compactly with a 4-column table: the share name, the closing price, the number of cents up or down, and the surmised reason for the change, if any.