How did the bull and bear symbols become associated with the stock market?
For those who don’t spend a lot of time on Wall Street, bulls and bears refer to opposite trends in the stock market. According to Investor Words, a bull market is “a prolonged period in which investment prices rise faster than their historical average.” Conversely, a bear market means “a prolonged period in which investment prices fall, accompanied by widespread pessimism.” So, bulls good, bears bad. No one’s quite sure how the two animals came to symbolize the market, but there are a few theories floating around. According to this article from the Motley Fool, a bear market earned its name because bears tend to swat at things with their paws in a downward motion (as in “the market’s going down”). A bull market, on the other hand, got its name because bulls swing their horns upward when they s
