The two basic weather states for stocks: rising for a while (bull) or falling for a while (bear).
A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices, typically defined as a twenty percent gain from a recent low. A bear market is the mirror image: a twenty percent drop from a recent high. Neither term describes a single day's move, they describe a trend that's held for a while. The animal imagery comes from how each attacks: a bull thrusts upward with its horns, a bear swipes downward with its paws. Which market you're in shapes almost every other financial headline, from how confident CEOs sound to how aggressively people spend.
Part of the Open Bell Glossary — plain-English explanations of the terms that come up on the show. Browse every term.