• Investment bankers have their own language, even when discussing mundane work-related topics.
• This can make the industry seem more complicated than it actually is.
• Here are 12 words and phrases that industry insiders say are commonly used in the workplace.

If a random person listens to a quarterly bank earnings call or waits in line at a coffee shop behind two bankers, chances are half the conversation will be indecipherable to them.

This is not just because finance is inherently technical. Part of what makes working on Wall Street seem so complicated and mystical to outsiders is the vernacular with which financiers speak, even when discussing everyday topics like bonuses and PowerPoint presentations.

If a CEO says he or she is “exploring strategic alternatives,” it often simply means that the company is trying to sell a underperforming industry. In the world of financial recruiting, a “coffee chat” is usually code for a preliminary job interview. And so on.

Using such specific, insider-only terminology makes things more complicated than they really are. It’s an extension of the culture of the industry as a whole: exclusive, difficult to break inand designed to weed out anyone who doesn’t want to understand it and keep up.

Business Insider asked industry professionals for their opinions on the most common words and phrases they’ve used and heard in the office. To be sure, Wall Street jargon can vary depending on the job at hand, whether it’s advising on trades or helping large investors buy and sell stocks and bonds. These 12 terms, however, seem to be part of the founding jargon of the investment bank industry.

Baking

This is the language of bankers when several banks compete to be chosen as an advisor by a client, whether for an IPO, merger, sale or refinancing. Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley Ted Choose said it was “seeing price increases occurring at a triple and higher rate than year-over-year” during their second-quarter earnings call.

Custom made

This right word sounds Dear. We emphasize it less because it’s code for something else and more because of its widespread use in the industry. In the context of finance, this term refers to tailor-made services; personalized; designed specifically for a client’s individual needs. You’ll find it on many financial company websites, often in a paragraph on the homepage that highlights all of the company’s “tailored customer offers.”

Color

“Color” basically means detail and is often used when bankers ask for more of something. Whether it’s research or an explanation, asking for “more color” means “tell me more.”

“Can you give us a little more color on __?” how much is it stock market analysts begin their questions to CEOs during earnings calls.

Bridge

Instead of talking about slideshows or PowerPoints, bankers call multi-page client presentations “decks.” It is common for junior bankers spend hours working hard on changes to presentations as instructed by senior bankers who want to use them in client meetings. A manager might leave a comment on a page telling the young banker to “kill this,” which simply means delete it. A manager can also ask the young banker to “give it another try,” which means redo the presentation and email it back.

Boil the ocean

It’s obviously not possible to boil ocean water, and that’s the idea behind this turn of phrase (even if it didn’t originate in the banking industry). If a banker remarks that a small company doesn’t need to “boil the ocean,” that essentially means they’re doing too much or making things more complicated than they need to be.

Ability

Capacity is another word for bandwidth, and this turn of phrase is often used by partners or vice presidents who need help from lower-ranking analysts at investment banks. The unwritten rule is that to be a “good” analyst, the only correct answer when a senior asks if he “has the ability” to edit a 50-page document in an hour is yes. (Their superiors might also follow up by assuring them that it “won’t be a big task.”)

Exit opportunities

In private equity, completing an “exit” generally refers to the sale of a company’s portfolio company, hopefully with a good return on investment. In the banking world, it has transformed into another use: a new job.

“Exit opportunities,” short for “exit opportunities,” refers specifically to employment prospects that are reasonably achievable after leaving a given bank or company. When a student decides to investment banking internshipsfor example, he or she might ask whether a specific company has “good exit opportunities.” For many young bankers, good exit opportunities often refer to the possibility of finding employment in private equity upon completion of the standard two-year analyst program. A bank with excellent exit opportunities may, for example, have many alumni working for large private equity firms.

Staff

In simple terms, “employee” generally refers to anyone who works in a company or organization. In the world of investment banking, “staff” is a very specific position and title referring to a person (usually a vice president) responsible for assigning work to junior bankers and assigning them to teams of specific transactions. They have a lot of power over the juniors’ lives, including the quality of the deals they work on and their share of the chores.

Usually, the staff role is temporary and is just one of the vice president’s many responsibilities.

Sweaty

This term refers to the number of hours or intensity with which a particular investment banking group tends to work. You might hear, for example, someone say that the healthcare team at investment bank XYZ is a “particularly sweaty” group. long hours — worse than usual (and the industry-wide norm is already between 80 and 90 hours per week).

The street

The Street (often written with a capital “S”) is shorthand for Wall Street – not the literal Manhattan neighborhood, but the high finance industry as a whole and those who work within it.

You might hear someone in banking say, for example, that their company has the “best culture in the market” or that a particular group is “at the top of deal flow.” A company that pays fairly offers compensation it’s “in keeping with the street.” In stock market talk, “trading with the street” generally means that someone is trading according to the majority opinion.

Top Bucket

Bonuses are indicative of a person’s performance – or at least the perception of performance of some senior bankers. If you get a top-bucket bonus, that means your check is on the high end of the spectrum. The mid-tier and lower-tier bonuses range accordingly. It is so much a part of the culture that the term is also used by higher-ups to describe their junior bankers professionally.

If a first-year banker regularly spends sleepless nights perfecting client materials such as presentations and research summaries, their vice president might say to the CEO, “Wow, Jane is a real top-notch analyst.” Jane could get one of the highest bonuses in her analyst class at the end of the year. Someone may be called a “low-level analyst” if they are not busy or are consistently the first to leave the office. The smallest analysts tend to receive the least desirable assignments.

Superior version

“Remember to update the version so I can see your changes,” an associate might say to a new analyst. Saving documents can get quite complicated in banking. Whenever a banker makes changes to client documents before the meeting – such as a presentation – it is common for each set of edits or edits to be saved as a new file. This is done in case a file crashes or someone needs to refer to an older draft. Bankers “level up” by adding v02, v03, v04, etc. at the end of the file name.