The economy has enough metaphors to make up a small zoo.

More famous dichotomies such as bull-bear in financial markets and hawk-dove in monetary policy are mentioned daily.

But what's the story behind those metaphors?

Let's talk about some of them....

WHALE

Used for economies that combine a large population size with geographic extension and that record very high growth rates. It has been applied to the cases of China and India. The two 'whales' are already today, in purchasing power parity (PPP), the first and third countries in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the International Monetary Fund's accounts. In the middle of the two 'whales' lies the United States.

PPP is an alternative method to currency conversion into dollars to compare the effective purchasing power between countries. Large investors, such as mutual funds, pension funds, speculative investment funds, large brokerage houses, which, through their multimillion-dollar decisions, decisively change the market are also called 'whales'.

BULL

It is used in the expression “bull market” when it is intended to refer to a period of stock market euphoria in which share prices appreciate very quickly and rise by at least 20%. It is the opposite of the “bear market”. The most recent bull market lasted from March 2009, after the end of the financial crisis, to March 2020, when stock markets suffered the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Bear

It is applied when a period of prolonged market decline is identified. In the original, bear market , corresponds to a drop of 20% or more in stock prices in relation to the moment of peak appreciation. Between September 2007 and February 2009, during the global financial crisis, the bear's period of dominance lasted 17 months on a global scale. The world stock market index sank 57%. It is the opposite of bull market , associated with the bull. The bull and bear duo are immortalized in sculptures in front of the Stock Exchanges in Frankfurt in Germany and Shenzhen in China.

Which animal are you imitating?