speculator

noun

spec·​u·​la·​tor ˈspe-kyə-ˌlā-tər 

plural speculators

: someone who speculates: such as

a

: a person who thinks or guesses especially in an idle or casual way about something that is unknown or uncertain

I sat Friday night in the dining room in front of my laptop, the TV in the next room flitting among experts and speculators about what happened in Paris …

—Scott Martelle

"… All that we ought to ask, therefore, is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and the speculators on our motives, should be capable of taking the highest view which the circumstances of the case may admit. …"

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

b

: a person who makes a relatively risky investment in something (such as stocks or real estate) in the hope of making a large short-term profit from market fluctuations

futures/currency speculators

By the late 1870s Edward Pray was living in New York City, still interested in mining but instead now as a speculator in mining stocks.

—Willa Kane

Over the years, many houses have been bought by speculators or real estate companies and rented out.

—Margaret Gillerman

Examples of speculator in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Digital World’s more than 400,000 retail investors included supporters of Trump and speculators hoping to cash in on the deal’s attention. —Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2024

To these speculators, Hollywood looked like a gold mine: the studios and entertainment corporations were ripe with redundancies and inefficiencies to be axed—costs to be cut, parts to be sold, profits to be diverted to shareholders, executives, and new, often unrelated ventures. —Daniel Bessner, Harper's Magazine, 21 Mar. 2024

While some voices have called for speculators to give Kate and the royal family some privacy, and others have suggested completely reasonable explanations for Kate’s disappearance, the fact remains: For one reason or another, people care about the royals. —Aj Willingham, CNN, 15 Mar. 2024

Private builders and speculators responded actively, taking on debt and pursuing increasingly dubious projects so that even as China was meeting its housing needs, such development reached the astronomical level of some 30% of China’s economy. —Milton Ezrati, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024

Throughout his more than 75-year career, Munger argued that there were two types of people who buy shares in the stock market: investors and speculators. —Will Daniel, Fortune, 26 Feb. 2024

But the Herald’s reporting shows that these foreclosures have often had the opposite effect, taking properties out of the hands of individual owners and delivering them to real estate speculators, and at a discount. —Ben Wieder, Miami Herald, 26 Jan. 2024

So long as there is an ample supply of speculators willing to trade the tokens, flush zombie blockchains will continue to roam the digital landscape. —Steven Ehrlich, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2024

And the historic rally has drawn in speculators, exacerbating the price volatility. —Alina Selyukh, NPR, 29 Mar. 2024

Word History

Etymology

speculate + -or entry 1; in earlier sense "observer, lookout," borrowed from Latin speculātor "scout, spy, sentinel," from speculārī "to keep a close watch on, spy out, watch for" + -tor, agent suffix — more at speculate

First Known Use

1555, in the meaning defined above