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 is just the opposite: A prolonged, widespread rise in the price of a large number of stocks. While the pessimism behind a market with declining prices drives it even further down, the optimism underlying a bull market drives the prices to even higher levels.

You shouldn’t get confuse a declining market and a normal market correction. A market correction happens after a sudden increase in the price level when people sell their stocks to take profit. It normally doesn’t last more than a few days.

It’s fairly easy to comprehend how traders can make money during a bull market; it’s in fact hard not to make a profit in such a market. How is it possible to make a profit in a free-falling market though?

One way to make money in a declining market is to accurately predict when it reaches its bottom and then invest in a selection of prime stock tips. You can use fundamental or technical indicators to try and predict the end of the drop in prices. This is very difficult to do, however. Even the experts often falter when it comes to correctly predicting the end of a slump in prices.

A further option you have is to sell stocks short. What happens in effect is that you borrow stocks from your brokerage and then sell them to another trader at the current (high) price. Once the negative market has taken its toll and the price of the stock is much lower, you buy it again and give back what you borrowed from the brokerage. It will of course only work if the market actually goes down.

Another route open to you is to buy what is referred to as “put options” in the industry. These increase in value during a bear market when the price of the underlying share drops. Once again you have to be right about the fact that the price is going to drop, otherwise you will lose the funds you paid for the put option.

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