Bull market
What makes a long rise a bull market, and how do you tell it from a single strong week?
In plain words
A bull market is a sustained period in which prices rise, typically marked by successive peaks and troughs that are higher than the ones before. The pattern is only confirmed afterwards, because each new high and each dip holding above the earlier low only become visible with time.
Why it matters
A bull market changes how risk behaves. Losses on pullbacks are often shallower and shorter, so leverage and position sizes that felt prudent in a falling market can survive for longer, encouraging larger exposure. Because the label is assigned in hindsight, it is a description of a phase rather than a signal about the next move.
In a real week: ETH, week of 2 August 2021
In the week of 2 August 2021, ETH opened at 2555.5 and closed at 3011.85, a gain of 17.86%, reaching an intraweek high of 3189.99 on Sunday, 8 August at 00:00 UTC. That return sat in the 92nd percentile of ETH's 181 weeks of history, and the close finished in the upper third of the week range. Yet ETH remained 30.49% below its 52-week high, and the four prior weeks ran down, down, up, up. A single strong week inside a mixed run is not on its own a bull market.
A common mistake
Calling any sharp rally a bull market. Higher highs and higher lows over many weeks define the phase; one large weekly gain, even an extreme one, does not.