Bull of Wall Street

When the Spaniard Hernán Cortes and his 550 companions reached the east coast of Mexico in 1519, he brought the Aztecs not only disease, death and ruin, but also the bad habit of bullfighting. For decades, cultural appropriation has taken place in most Spanish-speaking countries.

The custom developed somewhat differently in each country. The Mexicans replaced the bullfighter with a bear. In Texas, which was part of Mexico until 1845, bulls with long horns (longhorns) were chosen and put into the arena against chained grizzly bears. These bloody battles were especially popular with gold diggers in California during the gold rush (1848-1854).

Bull below, bear above

The bull and the bear used different fighting techniques. While the bull attacked with its head down and tried to pierce the opponent from the bottom up, the bear fought back in the style of Bud Spencer and delivered a powerful downward paw strike on the attacker.

After all, it was the Spanish writer Don Joseph de la Vega (1650–1692) who brought bulls and bears to the trading floor in his standard work on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, published in 1688. In his moralizing pamphlet, The Confusion of Confusion, the bull stands for rising prices through his fighting technique, and the bear for falling prices.

The term “bullish” for optimists and “bearish” for pessimists has stuck to this day. Sculptor Arturo Di Modica (1941-2021) believed in the power of Wall Street and in 1989 erected a “Charging Bull” monument outside the New York Stock Exchange with his three-ton bronze sculpture.

Fearless girl against predators

However, it was not the bear or various acts of vandalism that challenged the golden calf of the “capitalist beasts of prey”, but a fearless little girl (“Fearless Girl”) made of bronze, created by the artist Kristen Visbal (59) . In 2017, she protested the lack of female executives on American boards of directors. But the policeman was stronger and drove the self-confident child from the New York Stock Exchange.

And the bear? There is no place for pessimism on Wall Street. Because “Only the sky is the limit.”

Claude Cueny (66) is a writer based in Basel. He writes to Blick every second Friday. His thriller Dirty Talk has just been released.