Mind your language please

Matthew Lynn

The days of the industry using simple words such as 'buy', 'sell' and 'hold' may soon be over if HSBC and SG have their way

All professions develop their own language, which everybody else in the trade easily understands. For anyone working in the financial markets, three of those words have been 'buy', 'hold' and 'sell'. But now they look like they might be gone. In the past month, two major banks have declared war on the three most common words in the investor's lexicon. Straying into territory more usually the preserve of English or philosophy professors, they have decided that the problem with their work is not how it is done, it is the way they talk about it. HSBC said last month it was reorganising its ...