Animal Talk

The 2 most popularly used words in the financial world are undoubtedly bull and bear. They also happen to be 2 of the most misleading terms for a layman.

When I flipped to the finance or business columns while I was a teenager, I could never figure out what is meant by a bull market or a bear run. It makes no sense to see animals in the stock markets. Take those terms literally and you could have some pretty interesting visuals.

For starters, almost everyone knows that a bull market signals good times and rising stock prices while a bear market reflects bad times and downward spiraling stock prices. However, I guess not many of you know why those animals were chosen.

My innocent mind once thought that perhaps bulls signified good luck because they mated with the cows and the cows will have more milk; while bears were bad luck because they eat people. Well, it turns out that there is a whole lot more philosophy than that.

The explanation is actually pretty intuitive.

Bulls attack by thrusting their horns up (stocks go up).

Bears attack by swiping their paws down (stocks go down).

Bet you didn't know that.

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