Bull Market

The 20 percent threshold is a widely used rule of thumb among market commentators, not an official regulatory definition — but it has become the informal standard. The idea is that a 20 percent rise from a trough signals something more durable than a short-term bounce. By the same convention, a drop of 20 percent or more from a recent peak defines a bear market. These benchmarks apply most commonly to broad stock indexes, though the terms are also used loosely in commodity and cryptocurrency markets.

Bull markets are associated with expanding economies, rising corporate profits, and strong appetite for risk — what analysts describe as a risk-on environment. Historically, equity bull markets have lasted years, and some have extended for a decade or more, though their length varies considerably. The duration is only knowable in hindsight; a market is technically in a bull phase until it falls 20 percent, at which point commentators mark the prior peak as the end.

A common confusion is conflating a bull market with an uninterrupted rise. Even within a long bull market, prices routinely pull back 5–10 percent — these shorter dips are called corrections and do not end the bull phase unless they deepen to 20 percent. Understanding the percentage thresholds that define these phases is part of reading percentage moves in market data. Historical bull and bear cycles across countries are tracked on the countries and indicators pages.