crab market

plural crab markets

1. businessA market trend where a stock keeps fluctuating around the same price over a longer period of time, neither entering a bull market nor a bear market

   A crab market moves sideways. (This could go on forever. Anyone for tuna?)

   1994, Bruce McDougall, Michael Reardon, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Personal Finance for Canadians, Pearson Education Canada, →ISBN, page 72

   4 more examples

   Writing covered options is a technique to use when we're not in a bull market or a bear market, but a crab market. (I call any market that moves sideways for any length of time a crab market. This is not simply because crabs move sideways, but because people, deprived of their daily dose of market action, tend to get pretty crabby during these periods.)

   1989, Joseph L. Shaefer, Bringing Home the Gold, Dow Jones-Irwin, →ISBN, page 161

   There could be an extended "crab" market: the index stays pretty much flat for long enough that the fundamentals eventually catch up. It has happened before.

   1993 February 25, Brent Buckner, “da Bears vs. da Bulls”, in misc.invest (Usenet)

   A 'crab' market is when the market just traverses sideways, oscillating in a channel, between an imaginary 'floor' level and an imaginary 'ceiling' level.

   2006, Marquez Comelab, The Part-Time Currency Trader, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 95

   A crab market is defined here as a market where the difference between the close and open prices is not greater than ±5 % of the open price.

   2021 October 29, Carlo Requião da Cunha, Introduction to Econophysics, CRC Press, →ISBN

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see crab, market.

   Overall, the crab industry is faring well right now. The higher price of shrimp actually is a good thing for the crab market because crab is a higher-priced, premium item.

   2014 October 7, Addie K. Martin, Jeremy Martin, Southeast Louisiana Food, Arcadia Publishing, →ISBN

   1 more example

   Through the current study of weekly crab markets, monsoon season was observed to be the most productive season in terms of number of crabs brought for sale by the crab sellers from the nearby area.

   2016, Sharda Padghane, Shivaji Chavan, Dilip Dudhmal, “Fresh water crab Barytelphusa cunicularis as a food commodity: Weekly crab market study of Nanded city, Maharashtra, India”, in International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Studies, volume 4, number 4, →ISSN, page 17