What Is Bear 🐻 & Bull 🐂 In Stock Market? What Does Bearish Or Bullish Means? (#42)

What Are Bear 🐻 and Bull 🐂 Markets? What Does Bearish or Bullish Mean?

You've probably heard phrases like "the market is on a bull run" or "the market is bearish today." Here's what they actually mean.

The Basics

Bear and Bull describe the share market's overall behavior — which, in reality, is really just describing collective investor behavior, since the market itself doesn't act on its own.

Bear/Bearish = the market is down. Bull/Bullish = the market is up.

→ Related: What Is the Share Market?(#2)

Where Do These Terms Actually Come From?

This is where it gets interesting — and where the popular explanation and the actual documented history diverge.

The most commonly repeated explanation is that it's about how each animal attacks: a bull lowers its head and thrusts its horns upward, while a bear swipes its paws downward. It's a memorable visual, and a lot of people (myself included, before digging into this) assume it's the real origin.

The actual, historically documented origin is different. The term traces back to early 18th-century London, to speculators known as "bearskin jobbers" — traders who sold bearskins (or, by extension, stock) before actually owning them, betting the price would fall before they had to deliver. The phrase draws on an old proverb warning against "selling the bear's skin before you've caught the bear." Over time, "bear" became shorthand for someone betting on falling prices — and eventually, for a falling market itself. "Bull" emerged shortly after, around 1714, as bear's natural opposite — someone betting on (or benefiting from) rising prices.

The attack-direction explanation almost certainly came later, as a memorable (if unverified) way to help the terms stick — not as their actual origin.

What Does This Mean in Practice?

A single day of rising prices makes the market "bullish" for that day. A sustained, extended period of rising prices is often called a "bull run." The reverse applies for a "bearish" market or an extended downturn.

Hopefully that clears up not just what these terms mean, but where they actually come from — which turned out to be a more interesting story than the popular version. Thanks for reading.

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