Bull Market Profits

By Mike Swanson

Bear market or bull market are terms often used in conjunction with financial markets. They describe the general trend of a market. Individual shares may go up or down during a day or even over a period of time, but the entire market also follows patterns. Many analysts have rules around what period they make market analysis over and the percentage rise or fall they consider indicates a market movement.

A bull market describes a market where prices are generally on the increase. A bull market often starts when market confidence is at its lowest. At this time investor confidence starts to increase and there is an expectation gains will be made on rising stock prices. This is happening now in the gold stocks market.

A bear market on the other hand is a trend in a downward direction. The entire market goes down, not just an individual stock.

The most famous bear market conditions were post 1929 after the Wall Street crash. In the five years after this stocks lost nearly 90% of their value. They obviously recovered but it was a long road.

The patterns seen in a bear market tend to be a very big initial drop in values, which pushes a lot of the speculators out of the market. This is followed by a temporary period of stock price increases before the market starts to decline again over a longer period.

But after bear market comes a bull market. In a bull market there tends to be higher levels of trading. The key to making money is to buy a stock at lower price and sell it as it rises. But no one has a crystal ball and doing so is easier said than done.

The cycle can not be forgotten and people need to be aware of where the market is going and whether analysts consider conditions to be a bull market or a bear market. - 23305

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