Our Wall Street cast of characters, from chipcorley.substack.com. The bull builds. The bear bellyaches. The hog binges. The owl benchmarks. The badger battles. The wolf bites. The skunk bamboozles.
The Bull · The ascendist
The bull builds.
The bull market in the flesh. When Bucky charges, stocks climb, businesses hire, paychecks grow, and living standards rise.
The protagonist: our stock market archetype. The whole cast is named for him.
The Bear · The declinist
The bear bellyaches.
The bear market. When he takes over, stocks fall 20 percent or more from their peak, the economy often slides into recession, and job losses mount.
The antagonist: the bear market that turns the story into economic despair.
The Owl · The pragmatist
The owl benchmarks.
Scale in one wing, notebook in the other. He reads the data, checks it against history, and waits for the numbers before making each move.
The analyst: the economic sage of the blokes.
The Badger · The practicalist
The badger battles.
He poses questions, lots of them. First he asks it. Then he tasks it. Checklist in one paw, wrench in the other, he tries, fails, fixes, and tries again. Where others argue, he gets to work. His tool of choice is AI.
The doer: the reader’s stand-in, and the kind of hero who shows how it’s done. And does it.
The Hog · The plunger
The hog binges.
Wall Street’s old word for a speculator who goes all in on borrowed cash. IOUs in one hand, casino chips in the other. When the market turns, the leverage wipes him out. Bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered.
The tempter: Main Street’s fast-buck scoundrel and Washington’s personification of pork.
The Polecat · The grifter
The skunk bamboozles.
Polecat is old Western slang for a no-good reprobate. Beret, seersucker and a smirk you should run from. He shows up anywhere: Main Street, Washington, Wall Street. He peddles falsehoods: Ponzi schemes, cooked books, pump-and-dumps. He’s involved in crypto crap, corruption, cronyism. When LePhewy is around, something smells.
The grifter: if something’s gone kaphooey, blame it on LePhewy.
The Wolf · The vigilante · Diplomat
The wolf bites.
The boss of Da Cabal, the bond vigilantes: big investors who trade government bonds and push interest rates up when they smell reckless borrowing. He gives the orders. His beat is corporate credit and global debt, not your savings.
The enforcer: when borrowers overreach, DaCabal collects the bill.
Washington, D.C.
DaCabal acts as one, but is more than one. DaCabal is the pack of wolves. The boss is Capo DaWolf. He gives the orders. His beat is Washington’s debt, not your savings. Vito, Bruno, Rocco and Paolo work the desk. They sell first and ask questions later. Their battle cry is one word: “Yours.” On a bond desk, that means I’m selling it to you.
From The Bond Vigilantes: Who Are They? (Oct 6, 2026)
The Donkey and the Elephant · Washington’s odd couple
One holds the microphone. One holds the gavel. Both hold the same Treasury bonds. Markets price it first. Washington acts, and postures, after.
The guests: always together, so neither party gets a pass.
