Bull Market
An extended period of rising prices and generally positive sentiment.
Also called: bullish · bull
Written by Javier Sánchez Ros
In plain language
A bull market is a sustained advance, conventionally marked from a 20% rise off a major low, though the label is applied loosely.
Its practical signature is that pullbacks are shallow and bought quickly, and that structure keeps producing higher highs and higher lows over long stretches.
Bull markets flatter poor risk management. Oversized positions and absent stops appear to work right up until conditions change.
Worked through
A 78% win rate that says nothing about the trader
- Strategy
- buy every dip
- Win rate over the period
- 78%
- Index over the same period
- +31%
- What was being measured
- the market
Buying dips works extremely well when everything recovers, which is the definition of the environment rather than a property of the method. A 78% win rate across a strongly rising market is a measurement of the market with a trader attached.
The problem is not the profit — the profit is real and spendable. It is the conclusion drawn from it. A trader who reads that record as evidence of skill sizes up, and the sizing is in place when the regime turns and the same rule starts buying into declines that keep declining.
The honest test is whether a strategy has been through a regime it dislikes. Any method that has only traded a bull market has an unknown expectancy, however long the sample looks, because every trade in it was taken with the same wind behind it.
Knowing the regime does not tell you what happens next. It tells you how much of your recent record to attribute to yourself, which is the more useful of the two.
Why it matters
Knowing the broader regime tells you which side has the tailwind, and warns you when good results are coming from the environment rather than from your process.
Common mistakes
- Mistaking a rising market for skill and increasing risk accordingly.
- Assuming a bull market makes stops unnecessary.
Keep exploring
These concepts are connected. Understanding one usually makes the next one easier.
An extended period of falling prices and generally negative sentiment.
A sustained directional bias in price, built from a repeating pattern of highs and lows.
The pattern of highs and lows that describes whether a market is trending or ranging.
The set of rules that decides how much you can lose, before you think about what you can win.
Overweighting recent outcomes when judging what is likely to happen next.