A merchant who is involved in buying and/or selling cash commodities, or a professional speculator who trades for his own account and who typically holds exchange trading privileges. By trade, traders are investors who aim to profit from fluctuations in the prices of securities (and other financial instruments) or commodities rather than changes in their intrinsic values. To that end, traders hold securities for a given period of time (a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc) depending on their predictions or forecasts of market trends and prices.