It said: "The sales on the board were one thousand seven hundred dollars in American gold."

Investors and brokers watch the Big Board to see if the stock market is a bull market or a bear market .

In a bear market, prices go down. In a bull market, prices go up.

Investors in a bear market promise to sell a stock in the future at a set price.

But the investor does not own the stock yet. He or she waits to buy it when the price drops.

The meaning of a bear market is thought to come from an old story about a man who sold the skin of a bear before he caught the bear.

An English dictionary of the sixteen hundreds said, "To sell a bear is to sell what one has not."

Word experts dispute the beginnings of the word bull in the stock market.