Position

A position is what you currently own or owe in the market. If you have bought shares and still hold them, you are "in a position." If you have sold shares you do not own, hoping to buy them back cheaper later, you are also in a position, just the opposite kind.

There are two basic flavors. A long position means you own the asset outright, so you profit if its price rises. A short position means you have sold something you borrowed (or, with derivatives, sold a contract) with the expectation of buying it back later at a lower price, so you profit if the price falls. A position can involve a single stock, or several instruments held together as one strategy, such as owning shares while also selling call options against them.

Every position has a size (how many shares or contracts), a direction (long or short), and usually an entry price, which is what you paid or received when you opened it. From that point on, the position's value moves with the market until you close it by doing the opposite trade — selling what you bought, or buying back what you sold.

The word is also used as a verb: to "position" a block of stock means a market maker or dealer buys or sells a large chunk from a client and temporarily holds the resulting position on their own book until they can lay it off elsewhere. This is a separate, more specialized use from the everyday noun.