Bucket Shop

Dictionary Says

Definition of 'Bucket Shop'

1. A fraudulent brokerage firm that uses aggressive telephone sales tactics to sell securities that the brokerage owns and wants to get rid of. The securities they sell are typically poor investment opportunities, and almost always penny stocks.

2. A brokerage that makes trades on a client's behalf and promises a certain price. The brokerage, however, waits until a different price arises and then makes the trade, keeping the difference as profit.
Investopedia Says

Investopedia explains 'Bucket Shop'

1. Bucket shops are sometimes called the boiler room. The U.S. has laws restricting bucket shop practices by limiting the ability of brokerage houses to create and trade certain types of over-the-counter securities.

2. The second definition for a bucket shop comes from more than 50 years ago, when bucket shops would do trades all day long, throwing the tickets into a bucket. At the end of the day they would decide which accounts to award the winning and losing trades to.

Related Definitions

  • Boiler Room

    A place where high-pressure salespeople use banks of telephones to call lists of potential investors (known as a "sucker lists") in order to peddle speculative, even fraudulent, ...
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  • Broker

    1. An individual or firm that charges a fee or commission for executing buy and sell orders submitted by an investor. 2. The role of a firm when it acts as an agent for a customer and ...
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  • Bucketing

    A situation where, in an attempt to make a short-term profit, a broker confirms an order to a client without actually executing it. A brokerage which engages in unscrupulous activities, ...
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    • Churning

      1. An unethical practice employed by some brokers to increase their commissions by excessively trading in a client's account. This practice violates the NASD Fair Practice Rules. It is ...
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    • Circular Trading

      A fraudulent trading scheme where sell orders are entered by a broker who knows that offsetting buy orders, the same number of shares at the same time and at the same price, either have ...
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    • Front Running

      The unethical practice of a broker trading an equity based on information from the analyst department before his or her clients have been given the information.
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    • Penny Stock

      A stock that trades at a relatively low price and market capitalization, usually outside of the major market exchanges. These types of stocks are generally considered to be highly ...
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    • Pump And Dump

      A scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading or greatly exaggerated statements. The perpetrators of this scheme, who already ...
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    • Cross Trade

      A practice where buy and sell orders for the same stock are offset without recording the trade on the exchange, which is outlawed on most major stock exchanges. This also occurs when a ...
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    • Interpositioning

      The unlawful practice of adding an extra broker/dealer as a principal on a trade, even if no service is provided. Typically, interpositioning is done as part of a mutual benefit ...
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