Take Advantage Of A Bear Market

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 not difficult to understand how people make money in a bull market – it’s in fact difficult not to make money when prices go up all the time! How do traders make money while prices are dropping though?

One way of making money in a declining market is if you could with some degree of accuracy predict when the market has reached its bottom. Then buy a bunch of stock tips. Traders use all sorts of fundamental and technical indicators to assist them with this, but it remains a mammoth task. Many highly experienced traders still often lose money because they incorrectly expected the market to turn around.

Another possibility is to sell stocks short. 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.

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