Web Trader MT5
Someone who thinks prices are going down. The opposite of a bull. Where the term comes from is debated, but the most popular story is that bears push down with their paws when they attack, while bulls toss upward with their horns. Whether the etymology is real or invented after the fact, it’s stuck.
A bear can be a person (“the firm’s chief strategist is bearish on tech”), a position (“I’m short, I’m bearish here”), or a market environment (“we entered a bear market in late 2021”). Same word, different scopes.
Worth distinguishing structural bears from cyclical ones. A cyclical bear thinks the next six months are going to be ugly but the long-run case is intact. A structural bear thinks the entire premise is wrong: the company is going bust, the country is in decline, the bubble was a bubble. The two trade very differently. Cyclical bears use options and short-dated shorts. Structural bears patiently build positions and wait for years.
Example: Michael Burry, made famous by The Big Short, was a structural bear on US mortgage-backed securities from 2005 onward. He held the position through years of mark-to-market losses while the bubble kept inflating, and was ultimately vindicated when the housing market collapsed in 2007–08.
