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Trends & Market Structure

What Is a Dead Cat Bounce

A dead cat bounce is a rise inside a fall: the price bounces, looks like it is recovering, and then falls to a low beneath the one before the bounce. This paper shows you two of them drawn from bitcoin's turning points in October and November 2025, the idea as a ball bouncing down a slope, the bounces on the daily chart, each bounce measured against the fall before it, and how zooming out on your platform shows a bounce for what it is.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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A fall, a bounce, a lower low

A dead cat bounce is a rise inside a fall that ends with the price lower than before it. Bitcoin fell from 126,212 dollars on 6 October 2025 to 103,524 on 17 October. It bounced to 116,395 on 27 October, up twelve percent in ten days, and then fell to 98,938, under the previous low. It bounced again, to 107,495 on 11 November, and fell to 80,588. Each bounce looked like a recovery while it lasted. Each was followed by a low beneath the one before it, and the name is given once that low is in.

A ball on a slope

The picture is a ball dropped on a slope. Every bounce goes up, and for a moment the ball is rising; but the slope goes down, so every landing is lower than the last. A dead cat bounce is one of those bounces. The rise is real while it lasts — the price really did go up twelve percent. What makes it a dead cat bounce is what it sits inside: a fall that has not finished, so that the next landing is below the one before.

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