Head Fake is a sports term used when a player moves their head to fake a change in direction.

In market trading a head fake is where the market appears to be moving in one direction but ends up moving in the opposite direction. For example, the price of a stock may appear to move up, and all indications prior to that are that it will move up, but shortly after reverses direction and starts moving down.

Head fakes are often caused by market maker

Market maker

A market maker is a company, or an individual, that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a financial instrument or commodity held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the bid-offer spread, or turn. From a market microstructure theory standpoint, market makers are net sellers of an option to be...

s who place bids and asks in such a way that they cause the apparent (fake) trend in order to later profit from it.

In his "Last Lecture", titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams was a lecture given by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch on September 18, 2007 that received a large amount of media coverage, and was the base for The Last Lecture, a New York Times best-selling book co-authored with Wall...

" (at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007), Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch

Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....

extensively refers to "head fakes" during his speech.