bear

1) for bar. Connecticut and Virginia.

2) A word to denote a certain description of stock-jobbers.--Johnson.

The same term is used among the brokers and stock-jobbers of Wall street, New York. Their plans of operation are as accurately described in the annexed extract from Warton, as they can be at the present moment:

He who sells that of which he is not possessed, is proverbially said to sell the skin before he has caught the bear. It was the practice of stock-jobbers, in the year 1720, to enter into a contract for transfering South Sea stock at a future time for a certain price; but he who contracted to sell, had frequently no stock to transfer, nor did he who bought intend to receive any in consequence of his bargain; the seller was therefore called a bear, in allusion to the proverb, and the buyer a bull, perhaps only as it similar distinction. The contract was merely a wager, to be determined by the rise or fall of stock; if it rose, the seller paid the difference to the buyer, proportioned to the sum determined by the same computation to the seller.--Dr. Warton on Pope.

The stock speculators of Wall street are denominated Bull-backers or Bear-traps, according to the nature of their operations. The first signifies that they have bought stock largely and hold it; and the second, that they have sold stock which they have not got, and trust to circumstances to be able to supply it. The brokers themselves in these cases are called Bulls and Bears.--A Walk in Wall Street, p. 80.

There has been a very important revolution made in the tactics of a certain extensive operator in Wall street. The largest bull in the street has become a bear, and the rank and file have been thrown into the greatest confusion and left without a leader.--N. Y. Herald.

Some of the operators (in Wall street, owing to the rise in stocks), who were the strongest bears last week, are now roaring bulls.--Ibid.

An attack has recently been made upon the Reading Road in one of the city papers, evidently suggested by the bears.--N. Y. Tribune, 1848.