Stockmarkets bounced strongly yesterday – have we been saved from a bear market?

Stockmarkets rose sharply yesterday after suffering big falls in recent weeks – but that doesn’t mean we've hit a bottom, says John Stepek. Here’s what’s going on.

Stock market indices
A big move up is not generally indicative of a bottom
(Image credit: © A big move up is not generally indicative of a bottom)

Yesterday we saw a big bounce in stockmarkets, combined with a big plunge in commodity prices.

This was mostly pinned on vague but growing hope that a ceasefire deal might be reached in Ukraine (though it’s not clear to me whether there’s much to that or not).

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.