This page looks at what happened during bull and bear market periods for U.S. equities. The top chart shows the duration and gains during bull markets, a period where the prices in the financial market being observed are rising or expected to rise. Here we define a bull market specifically as a period which saw a 20% increase from a market trough. The bottom chart shows the duration and loss during bear markets. A bear market is usually generally defined as a period where prices in a market are falling or expected to fall. For the chart, we have used periods where we see a 20% or more decline from the previous market high to classify a bear market. We can use this to compare the duration and severity of different market periods over history. An interesting issue to note is that bear markets have tended to be much shorter than bull market periods.