Taco trade

May 29th, 20025

The “taco trade,” for those unfamiliar, originally had absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Wall Street traders used “taco” as slang for low-quality, junk-rated bonds — the kind of cheap, risky debt you could scoop up like a quick taco from a street cart. A taco trade meant diving into these bargain-bin bonds, hoping their high yields would pay off before anything went bust. It was a classic high-risk, high-reward move: you were loading up on the cheap stuff, crossing your fingers it wouldn’t end in financial heartburn.

So the term itself didn’t just come from nothing.

Today of course it means Trump Always Chickens Out when it comes to tariffs.