Bear market: what it means, how long it lasts and where stocks and Bitcoin stand in 2026

A bear market is a period of falling prices in which a market trades at least 20 percent below its last high. The S&P 500 has gone through exactly 27 bear markets since 1928; on average prices fell 35 percent, and 9.4 months passed from peak to trough. As of November 5, 2026, Bitcoin is in the middle of a bear market, 39 percent below its record from October 2025. The Nasdaq 100 is in a correction, 14.7 percent off its high, while the S&P 500 and the DAX are far from the threshold.

Here you will learn what the term bear market means and where it comes from, how long bear markets in stocks and Bitcoin have lasted, how to recognise the end and what you can do as an investor in this phase of the market. The figures are based on daily closing prices of the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, DAX, Bitcoin and Ethereum. How close the broad stock market is to a crash is covered in our overview of the stock market crash 2026.

What is a bear market? Meaning and definition

A bear market is a prolonged period of falling prices on the stock market. Finance uses a simple rule of thumb: if an index, a stock or a coin is 20 percent or more below its last high, it is in a bear market. The opposite is the bull market, with rising prices over a longer period.

Three terms have become established for the grades of decline:

• Correction: a decline of 10 to 20 percent from the high. Corrections are common and often over within a few weeks.
• Bear market: a price decline of 20 percent or more, usually over months. Investor sentiment turns, and expectations for corporate earnings and the economy fall.
• Crash: a slump that stands out for its speed. On October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 lost 20.5 percent in a single day. A crash can trigger a bear market, but it does not have to.

The measure is usually daily closing prices, not intraday swings. The 20 percent rule is a convention, not a law of nature. It says nothing about how much further prices can fall, and where a bear market began and ended is only clear in hindsight.

A bear market is also not the same as a recession. The stock market prices in expectations: share prices often fall before the economy shrinks and rise again while the news is still bad. Conversely, there have been bear markets without a recession, for example in 1962, 1966 and 1987.

Why is it called a bear market? Bull and bear on the stock market

The animals stand for the direction of prices. One common explanation: the bear swipes its paw from top to bottom, the bull thrusts its horns from bottom to top. A second trail leads to 18th-century London. There, traders were called "bearskin jobbers" when they sold bearskins before they had caught the bears, thereby betting on falling prices. The proverb that you should not sell the bear's skin before you have caught the bear is familiar in many languages.

Both animals are firmly rooted in German stock market language. Since 1988, the bronze sculptures Bull and Bear by sculptor Reinhard Dachlauer have stood in front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, commissioned for its 400th anniversary. The term bear market has spawned others: a bear market rally is a strong interim recovery in a falling market. A bear trap is an apparent breakdown that drives sellers out of the market shortly before prices rise again.

Bear market vs bull market: the differences

Bear and bull markets alternate, and together they form the market cycle. The main differences, with S&P 500 averages since 1928:

The figures show a pattern you should know as an investor: bear markets are fierce, but much shorter than the upswings in between. Since 1950, a bull market in the S&P 500 has even lasted 54 months on average and delivered a 157 percent gain.

Are we in a bear market right now? Where things stand in November 2026

For Bitcoin yes, for stocks no. Measured against its record, Bitcoin has been in a bear market since November 13, 2025, the day it first closed more than 20 percent below it. Ethereum has been beyond the threshold since October 10, 2025. Among stocks, the Nasdaq 100 is in a correction after the slump of November 5, while the S&P 500 and the DAX are close to their records.

The index figures come from daily closing prices on Yahoo Finance, Bitcoin and Ethereum from the daily candles of the Bitstamp exchange in dollars.

For the Nasdaq 100 this means another 6.2 percent down and the tech index is in a bear market. The S&P 500 would have to fall a further 14.9 percent, the DAX 19.3 percent. Why tech stocks and cryptocurrencies in particular are being sold is something we track continuously in our overview of why cryptocurrencies are falling.

The year 2025 shows how close it can get. During the tariff shock in the spring, the Nasdaq 100 slipped into a brief bear market: down 22.9 percent from February 19 to April 8, with a new high as early as June 24. The S&P 500 narrowly missed the threshold with a decline of 18.9 percent at the close on April 8.

How long does a bear market last? 27 S&P 500 bear markets recalculated

Since 1928, a bear market in the S&P 500 has lasted 9.4 months on average from peak to trough, with a median of 7.9 months. The range runs from just over a month in the 2020 Covid crash to almost 21 months in 1973 and 1974. Getting back to the old record took much longer, as the next section shows.

The count follows the usual 20 percent rule: a bear market starts at the last high once the closing price is 20 percent below it, and ends at the lowest close once the market has risen 20 percent from there. For the S&P 500 this gives 27 bear markets with an average decline of 35.1 percent and a length of 287 days. Fund company Hartford Funds, using data from Ned Davis Research, also counts 27 bear markets since 1928, with a decline of about 35 percent and 289 days.

For Bitcoin the table shows one thing above all: the 20 percent rule is of little use there. It counts 55 bear markets in 15 years, most of them over within a few weeks. For crypto, a different yardstick makes more sense, as explained further below.

The clusters stand out. Between 1929 and 1942 the rule counts twelve bear markets, because after the great crash the market kept rallying hard and collapsing again. The financial crisis also shows up as two bear markets: between November 20, 2008, and January 6, 2009, the S&P 500 rose 24 percent before falling to its final low on March 9, 2009. Such bear market rallies are typical and a trap for anyone who calls the end too early.

How long does the recovery after a bear market take?

For your portfolio, what matters is not only how far a market falls but how long it takes to reach a new high. From record to record, the twelve slumps of more than 20 percent in the S&P 500 since 1929 took 25 months at the median, and 24 months for the DAX. Yet the outliers shape the market's memory:

Broadly diversified indices such as the S&P 500 and the DAX have so far left every bear market behind and reached new records, sometimes after months, sometimes after years. Anyone who had bet everything on tech stocks in 2000, by contrast, waited more than 15 years. The difference lies less in timing than in diversification across regions, sectors and asset classes.

Bitcoin and crypto bear markets: how long the crypto winter lasted

In cryptocurrencies, bear markets run deeper than in stocks, and they have their own name: crypto winter. Measured from the record close to the lowest close before the next record, Bitcoin lost between 76.7 and 84.9 percent in the three big bear markets since December 2013. The path to the trough took around a year each time, the path to a new record between just over two and just over three years.

The current bear market is so far the shallowest of the big cycles. Thirteen months have passed since the record; in earlier cycles the bottom came after 12 to 13 months. Nobody knows whether the low of June 30, 2026, will hold. Since then Bitcoin has gained 29.8 percent, but it is still 39.1 percent below its record. How the halving and the four-year rhythm relate to these phases is explained in our guide to the Bitcoin cycle. All major slumps since 2011 are listed in our Bitcoin crash history.

Altcoins usually suffer even more in a crypto winter. Ethereum fell 94.0 percent after its January 2018 record and 79.3 percent after its November 2021 record. Ethereum currently sits 53.7 percent below its record close of $4,829.60 from August 22, 2025; on June 25, 2026, the gap was 67.6 percent. Smaller, thinly traded coins often lose even more in such phases, and some never recover.

How to spot a bear market: signs and causes

You can only be sure of a bear market once the 20 percent threshold has been breached. Some signs, however, suggest earlier that a pullback could turn into more:

• Lower highs and lower lows: each recovery ends below the previous one, and the trend points down.
• Prices below the 200-day line: if an index falls below the average of the last 200 trading days and stays there, many investors take it as a sign of a longer downtrend.
• Weak market breadth: only a few large stocks are holding up the index, while most shares are already falling.
• Rising fear: the VIX fear gauge jumped from 16.6 to 28.2 points on November 5, 2026. In crypto, the Fear and Greed Index shows the mood; how to read it is explained in our guide to the Fear and Greed Index.

The causes have been similar over the decades. Often it starts with a valuation bubble that bursts, as with dotcom stocks in 2000. Then come rising interest rates that make credit more expensive and bonds more attractive, as in 2022. Recession fears and falling corporate earnings amplify the decline. Sometimes an external shock is enough: the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the S&P 500 down 33.9 percent within 33 days in spring 2020. Crypto adds its own triggers, such as the collapse of major platforms like FTX in November 2022 or waves of forced selling of highly leveraged positions.

When does a bear market end? How a new bull market begins

Under the common rule, a bear market ends once the market is 20 percent above its low. The day of the low then counts retroactively as the end of the bear market and the start of the new bull market. The problem: this can only be seen in hindsight, and in volatile phases the rule often triggers too early.

The best example is the Nasdaq 100 after the dotcom bubble burst. Between March 2000 and October 2002, the rule counts six separate bear markets there, interrupted by rallies of more than 20 percent each. Anyone who called the end at each of them bought too early five times. In total the index lost 82.9 percent.

Bitcoin is showing the same pattern right now. According to the rule, the bear market since the October 2025 record has already ended twice: from the low on February 5, 2026, Bitcoin rose 30.9 percent by May, and from the low on June 30 to September 21 it climbed 47.9 percent. Both times the price then fell sharply again. A stricter yardstick is therefore more reliable: a bear market is only completely over once the market has reclaimed its old high.

Signals that can herald an end: prices no longer react to bad news with new lows, central banks cut interest rates, market breadth improves, and sentiment is so poor that hardly any sellers are left.

What to do in a bear market: strategies for investors

The most important rule: no decisions out of panic. Selling in a bear market turns paper losses into real ones and often means missing the strongest days of the recovery. Of the S&P 500's 20 best trading days since 1950, 8 fell in the middle of a bear market and 11 in the first two months after its low, including October 13, 2008, with a gain of 11.6 percent and March 24, 2020, with 9.4 percent.

• Keep your savings plan running: if you invest the same amount regularly, you buy more units when prices fall. How the cost-average effect works with Bitcoin is calculated in our guide. Providers of crypto savings plans are listed in the comparison of crypto brokers.
• Hold a reserve: money you will need in the next two years does not belong in stocks or crypto. That way you do not have to sell at the bottom.
• Diversify and rebalance: a portfolio spread across regions, sectors and asset classes such as bonds loses less in a bear market. If you rebalance to your target allocation once a year, you automatically buy more cheaply.
• Avoid leverage: in a bear market, leveraged positions are forcibly closed one after another. Why leverage is so dangerous in volatile phases is explained in our guide to leverage trading.
• Bet on falling prices only with experience: short positions, options and knock-outs offer opportunities in a bear market, but the risk is high. How shorting works in crypto and what it costs is something to understand before you open such a position.
• Keep your coins in self-custody: major platforms have gone bust in past crypto winters. If you hold for the long term, store your coins on a hardware wallet; our hardware wallet comparison gives an overview.
• Use losses for tax: if you sell crypto assets at a loss within a year, in Germany you can offset it against gains from private disposals, including in the previous year or later years. After a holding period of more than a year, a gain is tax-free. What that means for you is shown by the CryptoTicker tax calculator.

Our assessment: for Bitcoin, the bear market has been the defining situation for a year, while the stock market faces a test with the correction in the Nasdaq. If you set your strategy before the bear market, all you have to do in the bear market is stick to it. The figures since 1928 argue for patience: on average a bull market lasted more than three times as long as a bear market.

(As of November 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)