Bear Market

Professional share traders and investors who trade and invest money for a living use sophisticated methods in their line of work one of which is short selling. You may or may not know that you can actually make money in the sharemarket (stockmarket for our American counterparts) anytime - it doesn't matter if the market is trending up and very bullish, stagnant and going sideways or falling in a bearish market situation.

I caught a discussion on TV the on Tuesday on the Midday report on the ABC about possible stock picks considering the current global and local economic situation. The expert (sorry didn't catch his name or which firm he was from) said its time to go safe and invest in "defensive stocks" (keyword = invest!)

The newsreader asked him what was his stock picks and here they are - defensive stocks for uncertain times:

• Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) - because the exchange has a monopoly

I was surfing radio channels this morning when I overheard this quote from a market commentator: "...thank god for the resource boom - its masking our incompetence." As our markets are in uncertain times - Having the recent market crashes and the possibility of a recession in the United States. (I haven't been following the figures - but when are they going to call it?) [Aside: In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.] Where are we headed?

Is this the beginning of a bear market? Or just a correction?