I don't know if you've been paying attention to this but the stock market has started the year on a down note

There's a lot of trouble in China

Mike and I have lost we've lost billions of dollars this has people talking about what could be a bear market.

Why do we say bear market and bull market? They both seem to me like aggressive animals.

Big strong beasts. John Steele Gordon is a financial historian.

So, John, why is this?

Why do we have a bear in a bull market?

Well, the truth of the matter is we don't quite know. We know when they first appeared in the in the written record which was

in the very early eighteen century

about seventeen ten give or take

the most popular theory is that the but two terms come from the way

the animals attacks of their opponents whereas a bull would go down low and

lift his opponents up with his horns

where the bear would stand up in his hind legs and

swat his opponent down with his paw

uh... that's that's so interesting so basically if you were to graph the motion of the attack, the bull would be moving up like a bull market and a bear would be moving down.

That's right.

I almost feel like they could do a better job of coming up with a bull market I get you know that

sounds good bull strong it's virile things are going up but a bear market you know

also strong right so maybe they could come up with when the market is down and bad.

Be like an old cat market.

Well, there is such a fair market when it goes up a little bit.

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