What Does Bullish Mean in Stock Trading?

What Does 'Bullish' Mean in Stock Trading?

By Adam Levy – Updated Oct 8, 2025 at 2:58 AM EST

Key Points

Being bullish means expecting a stock or market to rise; bearish means expecting a decline.
Long-term bulls invest based on a company's future potential or sector growth.
Short-term traders buy stocks expecting quick gains from market movements.
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You may have heard an investor or pundit describe themselves as "bullish" on a stock, a sector, or the economy in general, and it left you confused.

Simply put, "bullish" means an investor believes a stock or the overall market will go higher. Conversely, "bearish" is the term used for investors who believe a stock will go down, or underperform. A bullish investor is often referred to as a bull, and a bearish investor as a bear. However, bullish can mean different things -- especially for short-term and long-term traders.

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The silhouette of a bull at sunset. — Image source: Getty Images.

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Buy & Hold Strategy

A buy-and-hold strategy in investing entails buying stocks or other securities and not selling them for long periods of time, sometimes decades.

It's worth noting you can go from bullish to bearish depending on several factors. Most straightforward, a security could change in price to the point where fewer bulls see the potential for outsized gains -- thus becoming increasingly bearish. Likewise, the stock could drop in price to the point where more bears don't think it will continue to drop.

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Additionally, changes at a company, federal regulations, or a different macroeconomic outlook could cause a bull to become bearish or vice versa.

The point is you're allowed to change your mind, especially when provided with new information. And, bulls and bears aren't too dissimilar.

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About the Author

Adam Levy is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst covering technology, consumer, and financial stocks and how policy, economic, and consumer trends shape personal finance, Social Security and retirement savings. Before The Motley Fool, Adam was a financial advisor at Edward Jones. He studied finance and electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

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