A Few Prosper In Bear Markets

You have no doubt heard the terms ‘bear market’ and ‘bull market’ before. What do they actually mean? A bear market is when there is a widespread and sustained drop in the prices of stocks over a period of time – Normally considered to be at least a twenty percent drop over a period of two months. As people get scared and sell their shares, it serves to push down prices even further.

A bull market, on the other hand, is therefore a prolonged, widespread increase in the prices of stocks. Just as the pessimism of a declining market pushes it lower, the optimism that drives a bull market tends to push prices even higher.

You shouldn’t get confuse a declining market and a normal market correction. A market correction happens after a sudden increase in the price level when people sell their stocks to take profit. It normally doesn’t last more than a few days.

It’s fairly easy to comprehend how traders can make money during a bull market; it’s in fact hard not to make a profit in such a market. How is it possible to make a profit in a free-falling market though?

One such way is if you could accurately predict the end of the falling market and then buy a selection of top quality stock tips. Although you can use a variety of fundamental and technical indicators to help you with predicting the turning point, it remains very difficult. Even the best of traders often fail to correctly predict the turning point of a slumping market.

Of course you always have the option to sell stocks short. This is rather less complicated than it sounds: all that happens is that you borrow a certain number of stocks from a brokerage at the (high) price of today and sell it to a third party at the same price. If you were right and the market actually drops, you then buy the same shares at the new low price and return them to the broker.

Another route open to you is to buy what is referred to as “put options” in the industry. These increase in value during a bear market when the price of the underlying share drops. Once again you have to be right about the fact that the price is going to drop, otherwise you will lose the funds you paid for the put option.

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