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

Duties and types

The word "trader" appeared as early as 1863 in a universal dictionary as "trading man." Traders work for financial institutions as foreign exchange or securities dealers in the cash market and in the futures market, or for their own account as proprietary traders. They also include stock exchange traders, but not stockbrokers or lead brokers. Traders 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, including:

Income

According to The Wall Street Journal in 2004, a managing director convertible bond trader was earning between $700,000 and $900,000 on average.