Finance Slang Explained: Stonks, Tendies, YOLO and Other WallStreetBets Nonsense

Larry "Big Short" Burry BEARISH

Senior Doomer Analyst

"Former death metal drummer turned market doomsayer. Predicts crashes using tea leaves and charts. His glass eye sees the future, and it's always red."

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Finance has always had its own language. “Yield,” “liquidity,” “P/E ratio” — designed to make ordinary people feel excluded. Then the internet happened, and now we have a second layer of jargon that’s designed to make finance people feel excluded. Fair enough.

This guide translates the most common WallStreetBets and crypto slang into plain English. No judgment. Mostly.

Stonks — The Meme That Accidentally Explained Everything

In 2017, a Facebook page created a meme: a crudely rendered businessman (later named “Meme Man”) standing in front of a rising stock chart, captioned simply “Stonks.” The word was intentionally misspelled. The joke was that retail investors don’t really know what they’re doing — they just know the line goes up.

The meme became prophetic. During the 2020-2021 bull market, millions of new retail investors flooded into the market through apps like Robinhood, often buying stocks based on Reddit threads, TikTok videos, and vibes. “Stonks only go up” became a genuine rallying cry — ironic and sincere at the same time.

The difference between stocks (serious) and stonks (not serious):

• You own stocks when you’ve done research, understand the business, and have a plan.
• You own stonks when you bought because someone on Reddit said it was going to the moon.

Both can make money. Only one is a strategy.

The stonks meme peaked during the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021, when WallStreetBets coordinated to bid up a dying video game retailer and squeeze hedge funds that were shorting it. GME went from $20 to $483 in three weeks. “Stonks only go up” was both the meme and the market reality — briefly. Then it crashed back to $40. The bag holders held the meme.

Tendies, YOLO, and the WallStreetBets Vocabulary

Tendies are profits. The term comes from a Reddit meme about a man-child demanding chicken tenders as a reward for good behavior. In WallStreetBets, “good behavior” became “making a profitable trade.” Earn tendies, spend them on more tendies. Lose them, and you’re rekt.

YOLO stands for “You Only Live Once” — a phrase that already ruined a generation of non-financial decisions, now applied to putting your entire savings into call options expiring this Friday. YOLO trades are the opposite of diversification. They’re concentration risk taken to its logical extreme. Sometimes they work. The people you hear about are the ones that did. You don’t hear about the ones that didn’t.

The math on YOLO trades: options expire worthless roughly 75-80% of the time. The people who made legendary YOLO gains on WallStreetBets are the statistical outliers. Survivorship bias made them famous. The losses are forgotten.

Diamond Hands vs Paper Hands: Diamond hands means holding through a crash, refusing to sell no matter what. Paper hands means selling at the first sign of trouble. In WallStreetBets culture, diamond hands is a virtue. In reality, it depends entirely on whether the thing you’re holding is actually worth holding. Diamond hands on a legitimate company in a temporary dip = good. Diamond hands on a scam token = how you become the bag holder.

To the Moon / Mooning: When a price is rising dramatically. “This is going to the moon.” Sometimes it does. More often it moons briefly then returns to Earth at high velocity.

Bag Holder, FUD, and the Bearish Terms

Bag Holder: The person still holding an asset after it has collapsed, too deep in denial or loss to sell. The term implies they’re carrying a bag of worthless stuff that everyone else dropped and ran from. Classic bag holder scenario: buying GameStop at $400 because “it’s going to $1,000” and still holding it at $12. The bag gets heavier.

The tragedy of bag holders is that they’re often not foolish people — they’re just psychologically normal people experiencing loss aversion. The research on this is extensive: humans feel losses twice as intensely as equivalent gains. So selling at a loss feels unbearably painful, even when it’s the rational choice. The market knows this and exploits it.

FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Negative information — sometimes true, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes entirely fabricated — spread to manipulate investor sentiment and push prices down. Classic FUD: “I heard [country] is going to ban [crypto].” Price drops 15%. Someone bought the dip. The ban never materialized.

The problem with calling everything “FUD” is that it becomes a way to dismiss legitimate criticism. When early warnings about FTX’s balance sheet appeared in 2022, some called it FUD. It was not FUD. It was accurate analysis. Know the difference: FUD relies on vague fears without evidence. Legitimate concerns come with verifiable data.

Rekt: Wrecked. Lost significant money. “I’m completely rekt” means your trade went badly. Often used with a skull emoji for emphasis. Closely related to being a bag holder.

NGMI / WAGMI: NGMI = “Not Gonna Make It” (used to describe bad decisions or someone who is doomed). WAGMI = “We’re All Gonna Make It” (collective optimism, often deployed right before everyone doesn’t make it). Both are used ironically and sincerely, often simultaneously.

Rug Pull and Crypto-Specific Slang

Rug Pull: The crypto world’s version of a Ponzi exit. Developers create a project, attract investment, then drain the liquidity pool and disappear — leaving token holders with assets worth zero. The metaphor: they pull the rug out from under you.

The 2021 Squid Game token is the textbook example: rode the Netflix show’s popularity, rose 45,000%, then the developers withdrew $3.4 million in liquidity overnight. Token went to zero. Investors couldn’t sell because there was no liquidity left to sell into.

Warning signs of an incoming rug pull:

• Anonymous team, no verifiable identities
• Smart contracts not audited by reputable firms
• APY promises above 1,000% (anything this high is mathematically unsustainable)
• Liquidity not locked
• “Buy now before you miss out” pressure

HODL: Originally a typo of “HOLD” from a 2013 Bitcoin forum post, now backronymed as “Hold On for Dear Life.” HODL means refusing to sell regardless of price movements. Bitcoin maximalists HODL through everything. The strategy has worked for long-term Bitcoin holders. It has destroyed people who applied it to coins that went to zero.

Degen: Short for “degenerate.” Used (affectionately) to describe high-risk traders who make extreme bets, often in DeFi. If someone calls you a degen, it’s probably a compliment in WallStreetBets circles. It means you’re willing to take the risks most people won’t.