Finance glossary
Pump and Dump
Definition
A scheme inflating an asset price with hype before selling at the top.
In a pump and dump, promoters spread misleading hype to inflate a low-volume asset price, then sell their holdings at the peak, leaving later buyers with losses. It is illegal in regulated securities markets but remains common in thinly traded stocks and cryptocurrencies.
In a sentence
Promoters hyped the obscure coin online, then dumped their holdings in a classic pump and dump.
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