bucket shop
bucket shop. Securities. An establishment that is nominally engaged in stock-exchange transactions or some similar business, but in fact engages in registering bets or wagers, usu. for small amounts, on the rise or fall of the prices of stocks and commodities. • A bucket shop uses the terms and outward forms of the exchanges, but differs from exchanges because there is no delivery of — and no expectation or intention to deliver or receive — the securities or commodities nominally exchanged.