Bears
Who are the bears in the stock market?
A stock market bear is a a participant of stock exchanges (investor, trader) who focuses his trading strategy on the "down" position of instruments that he most often wants to buy profitably. In other words, a "bear" is a market participant who opens positions to sell (short position, short) an asset (currency, stock, index, other financial instrument) in order to gain profit, because he believes that the price of the asset will fall.
Bears in the stock market are the opponents "bulls."In the case of bears, they buy the asset, expecting its price to rise in the short term. The activity of bears leads to lower prices, so a market with downward price dynamics is called a "bear market".
Why are stock market sellers called bears?
Market participants who open a deal in the hope that the price of an asset will fall were first called bears in the 18th century on the London stock exchanges. There are many versions of the appearance of this name, however, according to the most common version that has taken root in the currency market, sellers are called bears because a bear attacks with its paws from top to bottom. That is, stock bears knock down the price of an asset with their "paws".
Bears on
The term "stock market bear" appeared on the stock market, but it has taken root on the currency market. Bears are traders who open short positions in the expectation of further decline in the rate of the selected currency pair. For example, if you are a bear on EUR/USD, you bet on the growth of the U.S. dollar against the euro and wait for the currency pair chart to move downward (for 1 euro will give less and less dollars). The prevalence of bears in the market on the price chart of a currency pair looks like this downtrend.