A Bear Market

A Bear Market is a stock market term and it refers to when assets/shares of companies drop by 20% or more. It can be scary and most people panic as they lose money in this type of market. So let's say a price of a stock in your portfolio drops by 20%, this means if your stock was worth $100 a share now it is worth $80 a share.

Bear Markets can happen across the board such as in the S&P 500 index (top 500 companies in the USA) or it can be for an individual stock. This type of market is unavoidable and happens periodically. Bear Markets occur when investors lose confidence in a company and its value and can happen just before or after the economy moves into a recession (tough times could be ahead).