Whenever you check any market at any period, it’s almost always following a trend. Whether you’re checking the market for bonds, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange, precious metals, or stocks, price moves in an uptrend, downtrend, or sideways trend.
The first step toward becoming a successful trader is understanding these varieties of trends. The trend is the direction in which a financial instrument is moving. If you observe a chart and the candles or lines generally seem to be trending upwards, it is an uptrend. If the market does not have a defined direction, it’s a sideways trend or consolidating market.
Traders who want to take long positions based on the trend read about the minimum deposit on Quotex and kick start the trade. However, if the market seems to be trending downward, it is called a bear market. Bear markets are periods where several investors are pulling out of the asset due to some underlying factor.
What is a Bear Market?
A bear market is a financial market where prices are falling either steadily or in a frenzied manner. Generally, new traders find it difficult to navigate bear markets. The idea of losing money is unpleasant to any investor, and new traders rush to sell their assets, thereby accumulating big losses.
It is frequently said that bull markets or uptrend markets move calmly in the trading world. In contrast, bear markets usually lead to higher volatility. The key reason is that numerous traders tend to exit their positions when prices drop, leading to fear of uncertainty and doubt (FUD).
This typically leads to a domino effect where these panicked traders – or bears as is the trading term – make big sales. In markets where assets are traded massively as futures and traders could utilize the leverage of up to 100 times their trading capital, bear markets experience steeper sell-offs.
Bear markets don’t mean every trader is making a sale of their assets. It simply means that the traders with the greater percentage of money are holding short positions. There’ll always be traders holding long positions or buying the asset while expecting the price to move upwards.
Strategies for Trading in Bear Markets
The easiest way to trade in a bear market is to remain in cash. If you’re trading the cryptocurrency market, it’s best to remain in stablecoins until the price decline wears off. If you expect the bear market to reach a bottom at some point and then reverse direction, you can then transfer your cashback into the asset.
If you’re a long-term holder who intends to own that financial instrument for years, there might be no need to sell. Markets have consistently moved up and down. That’s the natural cycle of an actively traded asset.
The only reason you might want to sell as a long-term trader is if you bought the asset at the top of the market. The top of the market refers to the highest price the asset has reached in several years or its highest price ever. In a market like this, the price correction can prevent the asset from achieving that same price for an extended period.
Generally, traders feel trading with the trend is the safest form of trading. This leads to the second strategy, which involves making money from the bear market. If you’re a futures trader, you could open a short position to make money from the price crash.
Your short position could last for a few hours, a day, or even months depending on how long you think the bear market will last.
The third strategy is trying to make a counter-trend. Counter-trend traders expect the price to reverse at a point and start going upward. Counter-trends could be risky, especially when a trader gets caught in a choppy market. The best way to counter-trend is to take profits as soon as possible before the bear market trends resume.
Conclusion
Bear markets are scary experiences for new traders. When newbies get caught up in bear markets, it could seem like the falling prices would never stop. A few sell trades could cascade into a panicked sell-off, especially when the asset is traded on leverage.
The strategies that can be utilized in bear markets include hedging the value of your asset in cash or stablecoins, making a counter-trade, or holding a short position on the asset.