bucket fund

A primitive version of what today would most likely be a "mutual fund" or similar instrument. The origins of the term date to the stock market bubble of the Roaring Twenties, where at the peak of the frenzy individual speculators were offering just short of "$600 for radio" - in this case, not an actual AM radio receiver, but one share of stock in RCA, which was being hyped in those days as vociferously as Internet-related stocks at the turn of the millennium. A share valued at $1 or $1.50 less than a decade ago went for the equivalent of $568 before a 1:5 stock split; aviation stocks were similarly overpriced. That was a lot of money in those days, so those who couldn't afford to buy a stock directly would collectively buy into a bucket fund and the bucket fund would buy the stock, hold it briefly, then sell it to repay the individual speculators. Eventually the bubble burst and everyone lost their shirt.