Meat on the Bone

"Meat on the bone" is trader slang for the profit that is still available in a trade before the move runs out of steam. If a stock has already moved and traders say there's "still meat on the bone," they mean the price is likely to keep going further in the same direction, so there's still money to be made by staying in or adding to the position.

The phrase gets used both before and during a trade. Before entering, a trader might look at a setup and judge whether the expected move is big enough to be worth the risk and the effort — a stock that might only move a few cents isn't much "meat." During a trade, someone holding a winning position might say there's still meat on the bone to explain why they haven't taken profit yet: they believe the trend, catalyst, or momentum behind the move still has room to run.

The nuance beginners miss is that this is a judgment call, not a measurement. There's no formula that tells you exactly how much "meat" is left — traders infer it from things like how far the stock has already moved relative to its usual range, whether the news or catalyst driving it is still fresh, how volume and momentum look, or where the next resistance or support level sits. Two traders looking at the same chart can disagree on whether the meat is gone or still there.

It's also worth noting the flip side: when traders think a move is exhausted, they'll say the "bone is picked clean" or there's "no meat left," meaning they expect the easy profit to already be behind them and are wary of chasing the stock further.