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.
A bear market should not be confused with a simple market correction. Market corrections happen regularly and usually do not last more than a day or two.
It’s easy to see how one can make money in a bull market. In fact, it’s hard not to make money in such a market. But how can you make money in a declining market?
One way to make money in a declining market is to accurately predict when it reaches its bottom and then invest in a selection of prime stock tips. You can use fundamental or technical indicators to try and predict the end of the drop in prices. This is very difficult to do, however. Even the experts often falter when it comes to correctly predicting the end of a slump in prices.
Another possibility is to sell stocks short via stock trading. What you in effect do is to borrow stocks from a brokerage and sell them to a third party at the current high price. Once the price has dropped, you buy them back and refund the brokerage. You should only do this with stocks which are virtually sure to drop in price.
A further course of action is to buy so-called put options, which increase in price when the market declines. Once again you have to be pretty sure it’s actually a bear market which is still in a declining phase, otherwise you will lose the money you risked on the option.