Stocks & Equities · definition
Bull Market
A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices, commonly dated from a 20% rise off a low. Bulls have historically run far longer than bears.
A bull market is a sustained rise in prices. The common bookkeeping convention dates a bull from a 20% rise off a bear-market low and ends it at the peak before the next 20% decline. Like its mirror image, the label is informal but universally used.
Key takeaways
- Convention: a bull market begins 20% above a major low and ends at the next peak.
- US bull markets have historically lasted years (the 2009-2020 run exceeded a decade), versus months for most bears.
- Rising markets routinely climb a "wall of worry": bull runs include corrections and persistent scepticism.
- Bull and bear labels describe the rear-view mirror; they identify trends only after the fact.
Why bulls run longer
Equity indexes have drifted upward over the long term, reflecting economic growth, inflation and retained corporate earnings. Against that drift, declines are interruptions rather than the norm, which is why the historical ledger shows long bulls punctuated by shorter bears. The longest modern run, March 2009 to February 2020, multiplied the S&P 500 roughly fivefold while being doubted for most of its length: commentary archives from 2010 through 2019 are a museum of premature top-calls. That scepticism inside rising markets is what the old phrase "climbing a wall of worry" describes.
Inside the label
A bull market is not a uniform escalator. The 2009-2020 bull contained corrections of 16% (2010), 19% (2011) and 19.8% (late 2018) that stopped just short of the bear threshold, a reminder that the 20% line is bookkeeping, not physics. Sector leadership also rotates within a single bull; the companies that lead one phase frequently lag the next.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the animal names come from?
Unsettled. The most cited story: bearskin middlemen ("bears") sold before they bought, profiting from falls, and the bull joined later as the natural opponent, possibly via the era's bull-and-bear-baiting spectacles.
Is a bull market a good time to invest?
That is a timing question, and timing questions are personal advice, which this site does not give. The entry describes what the label means; it says nothing about what comes next.
Sources
This entry is for education only. Investing Value describes how financial concepts work; it does not provide investment, tax or legal advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset.