Bear Trap
A false breakdown that shakes out sellers before price reverses up — the bull trap's mirror image.
A bear trap is a deceptive downward move — a breakdown below support or a sharp drop — that convinces traders a decline is beginning, prompting them to sell or short, before price reverses upward and traps them. It often functions as a liquidity grab, running stop-losses below an obvious level before the real move up.
Bear traps are common near the end of corrections and at cycle bottoms, where one final flush shakes out the last weak hands. As with the bull trap, the practical lesson isn’t to predict them but to avoid over-committing to any single breakout or breakdown, especially through the round-number levels where stops obviously cluster.