Bear Steepener

  

The bear steepener happens when the yield curve starts to widen between long-term rates and short-term rates. Specifically, for a bear steepener, it's long-term rates increasing at a faster rate than the short-term rates.

The bull steepener refers to the opposite: short-term rates increasing quicker than the long-term rates.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a Bear Hug?7 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what is a bear-hug? well you remember old uncle [Uncle Larry appears]

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Larry right the former 350 pound Olympic wrestler who could braid his own chest

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hair yeah kind of gross but no that's the guy well he got out of the bathtub [Larry in a bath tub]

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once while y'all were at your ski cabin in Wyoming and a real bear saw him

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through the window and well simply put fell in love yeah that's how

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Bears do it well Larry went over to the bear family [Larry wearing bear fur]

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for Christmas and when he walked in a little bear dude guy screamed Mom, there's a

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human in the cave but Larry fit right in he hugged each of the Bear Jamboree [Larry hugging a bear]

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family really hard they wanted to call it a human hug but well somehow the name

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didn't stick so uncle Larry is that guy well he hugged at Christmas

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bears humans and whatever he hugged hard.. hard enough to squeeze the air out of

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anyone or anything and if he suddenly let go well you had a really hard time [Larry lets bear go and bear struggles to breathe]

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catching your breath well that's the setting of a Wall Street bear hug, a big

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hairy powerful player often recently bathed ideally yeah not still in the

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bathtub making a bid to buy a weaker competitor at a price substantially

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higher than the current market price of the target it's a hug and the target had [Larry chasing a man for a hug]

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better hugged back and be acquired or else why because if the bear hugger

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suddenly lets go while the target falls back from the $28

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a share of the bear is offering to buy it falls all the way back to the 15

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dollars it was trading at before all that you know hugging started and if the

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bear walks away and the company just languishes at 15 bucks a share without [Bear walks away with company]

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any other bidders.. the board gets their pants sued off by shareholders who

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are just "robbed" of $13 a share in gains likely meaning that the

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entire company reboots and in hindsight well that it would have been oh so much

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better to let Larry just move into the cave where you know he really felt at [Larry in the cave with bears]

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home with everyone there check out those salmon..

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