breaking the buck
- idiom
- US
:
romper el dólar
- The financial analyst warned that breaking the buck would trigger significant losses for shareholders.
Examples
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After the unexpected market downturn, breaking the buck became a real concern for many fund managers.
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And if we wait too long, the fear of this breaking the buck could actually return.
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Many investors panicked when news spread about a money market fund breaking the buck.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The constituents 'break' (damage/violate) and 'buck' (a dollar) signal a problem involving money, so a learner might infer a negative financial event. However, the precise technical meaning — a money-market fund's net asset value falling below one dollar — is specialised financial jargon and not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is only partly transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Breaking the buck comes from money funds where each share should be worth one buck, or 'one dollar'. When the fund's value 'breaks' that dollar and falls below it, investors can lose money, so breaking the buck means a fund has dropped under 'one dollar' and caused a 'loss'.