What is the difference between a bear and a bull?

Here's why Bears. Bulls. Two big, scary mammals that serve as Wall Street shorthand for the stock market’s general mood. Bear = pretty much everyone’s selling. Bull = pretty much everyone’s buying. This week, US stocks fell into a “bear” market, dropping more than 20% from their most recent peak in early January.

Is there a connection between bulls and bears?

There’s a bit of gruesome history linking bulls and bears in this way, according to the financial media site Investopedia. Between the 1200s and 1600s in England, people would attend bull- and bear-baiting contests and gamble on the outcomes.

What is a bear in the marketplace?

One of the earliest references of the term "bear" used to describe a marketplace transaction came in 1709 from Richard Steele, publisher of the British literary and society journal, The Tatler. In an essay, Steele defines a "bear" as an individual who places a real value on an imaginary object and thus is said to be "selling a bear." 1 

Why did the poet choose the bull as the bear's counterpart?

Whither the bull? The bull seems to have been a response to the bear amid the South Sea frenzy, and we’d have to ask (long dead) poet Alexander Pope why he selected the bull as the bear’s counterpart in this verse that alludes to his participation in the stock scandal: And Jove with joy puts off the Bear.