Paper Hands vs. Diamond Hands - A Boomer's Guide To WallStreetBets Lingo

I wanted to do a special article today that’s for us, the older people. The Boomers, the Gen X, and well, basically everybody above 40, explains Markus Heitkoetter of Rockwell Trading.

See, it has been such a crazy week. There has been insane volatility and volume on stocks like GME, AMC, BB, and then recently silver. Most of it has been in the hands of the WallStreetBets crowd, and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with what exactly these folks are saying on the WallStreetBets forum.

I mean, they’re using terms like “tendies,” “YOLO,” and “boomers.” So today I want to help you and me to cut through the noise and define some of the terms that you might be seeing on WallStreetBets if you’ve been going to this forum.

GME & WallStreetBets Recap

Now, before I do this, let’s take a minute to recap what’s been going on. You see, WallStreetBets is a popular forum on Reddit with millions of followers.

As you can see, at the time of this writing, they have now about 8.2 million followers. That’s up from around 2 million at the beginning of the week. They decided to go after hedge funds, especially short-sellers, and chose a few heavily shorted stocks as targets and drove prices up.

Now, ultimately, these short-sellers are the ones who are mocking the small-account traders that had to close their positions at a massive, massive loss. Now the most famous being talked about is GME, which is GameStop (GME). Wow! It went from around $40 all the way up to $418, but then the stock went down, mainly because of the extreme limitations that online brokers put on the stock. Robinhood, for example, was only allowing traders to buy 20 shares of GME. I mean, come on, that’s a joke.

WallStreetBets Lingo

Now back to why I’m writing this article. You might have been peeking into the WallStreetBets forum to see what’s going on, and you may have been confused by all the terms they’re using. This is why I want to show you the ten most common terms that you’ll see on this forum, and I’ll explain to you what they mean.

1. STONKS

Now, “stonks” started as a meme a few years back and was used in reaction to what others thought were bad trading stock choices. On WallStreetBets, it is used as a more general term for stocks that they might be trading.

2. NEWBIE

The term “newbie” is an easy one, and it refers to a rookie trader who is new to trading.

3. BOOMER

Now, we are talking again about boomers, and a “boomer” is what the WallStreetBets crowd used to describe an older person. Somebody actually called me a boomer. I thought that being 51 years old made me apart of Gen X, but I guess boomer has become more of a generic term for anyone over 40 or so, at least in the WallStreetBets forums 

4. BAGHOLDER

Now, another popular term being thrown around is “bagholder.” What are bagholders here? Bagholders are traders who have taken a heavy loss in a stock. In other words, they’re left holding the bag. As you can see in the picture above, somebody said, “Glad I found a WSB, I like the stock, and all of you guys and I don’t mind being the bagholder now or in the end.”

As you can see this person here is suffering a pretty massive loss, and this is what would be referred to as a “bagholder.”

5. TENDIES

You may have also seen “tendies” being used quite a bit, and tendies refer to the profits a trader makes off a stock. Traders like to use the chicken or drumstick emoji when they’re talking about tendies. This is an awesome individual who said, “Used some of my GME tendies to buy Nintendo switches from GameStop and then donated them to a Children’s Hospital,” which I think is amazing.

6. YOLO

One that you may have already heard is “YOLO,” and it’s an acronym for You Only Live Once. Now, in the photo above somebody said, “Just YOLO’d 330k dollars to keep this party going to the moon.” We’ll talk about “to the moon” here in a moment. I’ve also seen it used like, “Hey, I just wired it, I yolo’d it.” You only live once, right?

7. DIAMOND HANDS

Number 7 on this list is “Diamond Hands.” When somebody mentions diamond hands, it means that they’re holding their position no matter what. Even when they are suffering through some massive drawdowns. The diamond and the hand emojis are also used in reference for diamond hands. One of the most famous diamond hands here on WallStreetBets, seen in the photo above, is someone who posted a $5,000,000 loss, but overall, he’s still nicely up. But hey, look, that is a big loss. This is where you need diamond hands, right?

8. PAPER HANDS

On the other hand, and this is where we go to term number eight, which is the term “paper hands.” So, what are paper hands? It’s the opposite of diamond hands, meaning if someone has paper hands, they’re nervous, and they sell their position instead of holding it. These are the people who are selling GameStop right now.

9. APES

Term number 9 on the list is “apes,” and it’s really quite, quite interesting because on WallStreetBets they are referring to themselves as this “big army of apes.” At first, I was a little bit surprised by this, but hey, this is what they call themselves.

You’ll see things like “apes stay strong,” or also sometimes you’ll see “I’m happy that I’m with you degenerates” because this is what they are referring to themselves as in this community. It basically means that this is a community, and they’re in this together.

10. TO THE MOON

Now, the last one here is “to the moon.” To the moon is their profit target, right? “Volume is low. Don’t believe the news. GME is going to the moon.” and this profit target is fairly wide open.

Let’s take a look at the chart because for GME, at some point, the target was defined at a thousand. This is a very, very high-profit target, which seems to be “the moon” they’re referring to, and traders are also using the rocket ship emoji to reference to the moon.

So, these are the top 10.

Summary

Me personally, I am staying away from these crazy stocks, or stonks, right? They’re fun to watch, but I personally prefer SRC profits. What does this mean? It means profits that are Systematic, Repeatable, and Consistent. I know sounds super boring, but you see, it works very well for me.

I’m getting too old for the YOLO mentality; you only live once. And you see, just yesterday I wired my January profits from my trading account into my checking account. It was a little bit over $21,000. Boring? Yes, but it pays the bills, right?

Learn more about Markus Heitkoetter at Rockwell Trading.