POP

A "pop" is trader slang for a fast, short-lived jump in a stock's price. It is not a technical indicator or an official term you will find in exchange rulebooks — it is chart-room shorthand for "the price moved up quickly," usually within seconds or minutes rather than over hours.

The word is almost always used to describe a price level someone is watching, not just a general vibe of "it went up." Traders say things like "shorting the pop to $100," meaning they plan to sell short (borrow and sell shares, betting the price falls) once the stock trades up to $100. Or "selling into the pop," meaning using a sudden upward move as the moment to exit a position they already hold, rather than waiting and hoping for more.

The nuance that trips up beginners is that a pop describes the speed and shape of the move, not its size or its cause. A stock can pop half a percent or pop ten percent — what makes it a "pop" is that it happened abruptly, often on a burst of volume (the number of shares changing hands) or a news headline, and it may or may not last. Many pops fade just as fast as they appeared, which is exactly why traders plan their action ("I will short on a pop to X") in advance rather than reacting in the moment.

It is also worth separating "pop" from a genuine breakout or trend change. A pop is a single sharp move; whether it turns into a sustained new direction or just gets sold back down is a separate question the trader still has to answer.