A 16th-century proverb advises: “It’s unwise to sell a bear’s skin before catching it.”
That’s one of the stories used to explain why, in modern times, Wall Street types call someone who sells a stock expecting its price to drop a “bear.” It follows that a market in which securities or commodities are persistently declining in value is known as a “bear market,” like the one U.S. stocks are experiencing now.
