Market Trends - Stocks

Market Trends

In investment or investing, financial markets are commonly believed to have market trends that can be classified as primary trends, secondary trends (short-term), and secular trends (long-term). This belief is generally consistent with the practice of technical analysis and broadly inconsistent with the standard academic view of financial markets, the efficient market hypothesis.

That market prices do move in trends is one of the major assumptions of technical analysis, and the description of market trends is common to Wall Street.

Market trends are described as periods when bulls (buyers) consistently outnumber bears (sellers), or vice versa. A bull or bear market describes the trend and sentiment driving it, but can also refer to specific securities and sectors ("bullish on IBM", "bullish on technology stocks," or "bearish on gold", etc.).

Bull market

A bull market tends to be associated with increasing investor confidence, motivating investors to buy in anticipation of further capital gains. The longest and most famous bull market was in the 1990s when the U.S. and many other global financial markets grew at their fastest pace ever.

In describing financial market behavior, the largest group of market participants is often referred to, metaphorically, as a herd. This is especially relevant to participants in bull markets since bulls are herding animals. A bull market is also described as a bull run. Dow Theory attempts to describe the character of these market movements.

The United States has been described as being in a long-term bull market since about 1983, with brief upsets including the Panic of 1987 and the NASDAQ Crash in 2000.

Bear market

A bear market is described as being accompanied by widespread pessimism. Investors anticipating further losses are motivated to sell, with negative sentiment feeding on itself in a vicious circle. The most famous bear market in history was 1930 to 1932, marking the start of the Great Depression. A milder, low-level long-term bear market occurred from about 1967 to 1983, encompassing the stagflation economy, energy crises in the 1970s, and high unemployment in the early 1980s.

Prices fluctuate constantly on the open market; a bear market is not a simple decline, but a substantial drop in the prices of a range of issues over a defined period of time. By one common definition, a bear market is marked by a price decline of 20% or more in a key stock market index

from a recent peak over a 12-month period. However, no consensual definition of a bear market exists to clearly differentiate a primary market trend from a secondary market trend.

Investors frequently confuse bear markets with corrections. Corrections are much shorter lived, whereas bear markets occur over a longer period with typically a greater magnitude of loss from top to bottom.

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