The Tale of Bears, Bulls, and Buying the Dip

Long before Wall Street became synonymous with the rise and fall of fortunes, before traders clutched their phones screaming “sell!” or “buy the dip,” the now-famous animal metaphors of “bear market” and “bull market” clawed and charged their way into the lexicon of finance. These terms, as familiar today as an overcaffeinated stockbroker, have a history as colorful as the ticker tape that once fluttered across trading floors. Let’s take a lighthearted dive into their origins, their literary debut, and why, much like a good meme, they’ve stood the test of time.

The bear—cumbersome, growling, and terrifying if it decides you’re dinner—is a perfect metaphor for pessimism. The term “bear market” originally sprang from a proverb warning against “selling the bear’s skin before you’ve caught it.” Traders in 17th-century England, those scrappy speculators of yore, would sell borrowed shares (like that hypothetical bear skin) in the hopes of buying them back later at a lower price, pocketing the difference. These hopeful gamblers were derisively called “bearskin jobbers,” a term that soon shortened to “bears,” much to the relief of anyone who values brevity over baroque speech.

Across the metaphorical pit stood the bull, a creature known for charging forward with reckless abandon. The bull is optimism embodied, an animal that doesn’t think twice before rushing headlong into whatever lies ahead—a fitting symbol for traders betting on a market’s upward trajectory. The origins of “bull market,” while less vivid than the bear’s skin-swapping tale, may stem from the way a bull’s horns thrust upward, in stark contrast to the bear’s downward swipe of its claws. It’s an elegant metaphor that encapsulates the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals to make sense of an unpredictable world.

The first recorded instance of “bear market” dates back to 1709, penned by satirist and stock market observer Richard Steele in his periodical The Tatler. Steele, who had an eye for human folly, referred to bearish speculators as those who “sell what they do not possess.” His quip was aimed at financial opportunists, but it was also a wink at the emerging language of the market—a language that would evolve, like the economy itself, into something simultaneously profound and absurd.

And what of “bull market”? It first locked horns with public consciousness a bit later, by association with the bear, though its exact moment of literary debut is harder to pinpoint. The two terms became inseparable, like salt and pepper, or traders and coffee, with their opposition perfectly encapsulating the market’s inherent volatility. Together, the bear and the bull became mascots of a financial ecosystem that thrives on chaos, each side perpetually trying to gore or claw its way to dominance.

Fast forward to modern trading desks, where phrases like “buy the dip” (a hopeful anthem of the bullish) and “catch a falling knife” (a cautionary tale from the bearish) are thrown around with the fervor of a pub argument about football. These expressions are the descendants of the bear and the bull, playful yet loaded with meaning. “Buy the dip,” for instance, whispers sweet nothings of opportunity during downturns, while its somber cousin, “panic selling,” reminds us that humans have an uncanny ability to make bad decisions en masse.

Yet, despite the high-tech gadgets and algorithmic trading that now define the market, we still cling to the primal imagery of animals. The bear and the bull, with their timeless growl and charge, remind us that markets are not just numbers on a screen but reflections of human emotion—fear and greed, pessimism and optimism, retreat and advance. These metaphors persist because they’re accessible, relatable, and, quite frankly, hilarious when you imagine a bear and a bull bickering over the price of Bitcoin.

So, what’s the takeaway from all this? Whether you’re clutching your portfolio during a bear market or riding high on a bullish wave, remember that these terms were born not out of Wall Street but from the rich, messy fabric of human experience. Markets will rise and fall, bulls will charge, bears will swipe, and traders will always—always—find a way to coin a phrase for the chaos. And as for buying the dip? Well, let’s just say that sometimes the dip turns out to be a canyon.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sell the bear’s skin I don’t yet own. Hopefully, this bull doesn’t catch me on the way out.