etymology - From the "Baghdad bounce" to the "dead-cat bounce"

Origin of the phrase

Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition (2013) has this entry for "dead cat bounce":

dead cat bounce A surprisingly quick but short-lived recovery from adversity. The term originated in the 1980s and referred to a suddenly improved price in a stock that lasted only until speculators quickly resold it at a higher price. It alludes to throwing a dead cat against a wall, from which it will bounce but remain dead. The term has been extended to similar phenomena, as in The home team has won the last two games, but don't count on more victories; that was a dead cat bounce.

That "dead cat" is not a traditional turn of phrase in U.S. slang (at least) is clear from the lack of any entry for it in J.E. Lighter, The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994), which does have entries for "dead dog," "dead duck," "dead fish," "dead horse," "dead pigeon," "dead rabbit," and "dead turkey." The omission of "dead cat [bounce]" suggests not only that there was no historical resonance in the choice of a bouncing cat, but also that the expression "dead-cat bounce" was not yet widely used in the United States almost ten years after the term first occurred in the [London] Financial Times in the context of stock prices.

As for the proverb "Even a dead cat will bounce," it appears in Charles Doyle, Wolfgang Mider & Fred Shapiro, The [Yale] Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012), but with a first occurrence date of 1987:

Even a dead cat will bounce.

1987 "Shrinking Profit Margins Increase Risk of Aerospace Investments," Aviation Week & Space Technology 127, no. 9 (31 Aug.) 64: "If dropped far enough, even a dead cat will bounce,' one aerospace analyst aid about the recent firmness in aerospace stock prices." 1990 The Advertiser {Adelaide, Australia} 8 Apr.: "One analyst said the short-lived recovery was nothing more than a technical recovery or 'dead cat bounce.' 'Even a falling dead cat will bounce, but not fr and not for long,' he said." Possibly the proverb was the basis of the financial term "dead cat bounce," even though the noun phrase appeared earlier in a column by Chris Sherwell and Wong Sulong, "Singapore Stock Market Stages a Modest Recovery," in the Financial Times {London} 7 Dec. 1985: "Despite the evidence of buying interest yesterday, they said the rise was partly technical and cautioned against concluding that the recent falls in the market were at an end. 'That is what we call a "dead cat bounce,"' one broker said flatly."

Clay Naff, About Face: How I Stumbled onto Japan's Social Revolution (1994) treats "dead cat bounce" as a term of art in stock analysis, with a direct tie-in to the proverb:

A "dead-cat bounce" is a false recovery in stock prices, brought on by technical buying after a rapid drop in prices. "Even a dead cat will bounce if you drop him from high enough," explained a gleeful young trader. The trick, she explained, is to make your money on the fall, not the bounce.

So it appears that the expression is native to the financial markets, whether it first arose in the form of a simple metaphor ("dead cat bounce") or a longer proverbial expression ("even a dead cat will bounce").

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Use of the phrase in nonfinancial settings

A Google Books search turns up several instances where "dead cat bounce" appears in settings that have nothing to do with stock prices.From Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (2000):

In all honesty, he had to admit that the mission forced upon him by his crafty grandmother was a good deal less boring, potentially, than the mickey mouse assignment he'd been handed by Langley. Which was not to say it would be anything beyond an inconvenience, but it had the virtue, at least, of being an out-of-the-ordinary inconvenience, a kind of dead-cat bounce. A couple of extra days in South America wasn't exactly going to poison all the tadpoles in his drainage ditch. He would endure.

From Frank Scoblete, Get the Edge at Craps (2002):

After I release the dice, they travel side-by-side and go through identical motions. They land together, hitting the table flat or on edge, still turning over together in a similar parabolic trajectory, and possibly hitting the table a second time. They take what I call a "dead cat bounce" up just grazing the rubber pyramids slightly and coming down to rest. During the delivery, it looks as though only one die was thrown along the length of a mirror, and the second die is just its reflection.

From James Hawkins, No Cherubs for Melanie: An Inspector Bliss Mystery (2002):

Nursing his hugely swollen leg, Detective Inspector Bliss of the Metropolitan Police sat in the dark, damp pit waiting for Armageddon and wondering what had happened to his life. "At my age I thought I would have everything sorted," he mused, speculating on the speed his life had free-fallen since Sarah had let go. And, although Margaret hadn't exactly picked him up, she had certainly given him cause to rebound. Some rebound, he thought, surveying his gloomy circumstances. I suppose they would call this a dead-cat bounce, he thought, wondering who "they" might be. He also wondered how his old cat was faring without him[.]

From Philip Jolowicz, Walls of Silence: A Novel (2002):

"No e-mails to speak of,” Paula declared, as I bounced into my office at around noon. The bounce was a manifestation of the irrational optimism that I would need to get through the day.

It was a dead cat bounce.

From Gary Bouma, "The Emerging Role of Religion in Public Policy in the Asia Pacific," in, Regional Security in the Asia Pacific: 9/11 and After (2004):

Is religion one of the core elements differentiating the civilizations of the globe and fuelling their conflict as predicted by Huntington (1993)? Is religious diversity a threat to the integrity of the postmodern nation-state? Or is religion just enjoying a 'dead cat bounce' on the way to oblivion (Hervieu-Leger 2000; Davie 2002)?(Hervieu-Lé ger 2000; Davie 2002)? Each of these basic images of the current state of religion inform public policies about the management of religious diversity.

From Jason Burke, The 9/11 Wars (2012):

For one British security official, the spate of attacks in 2007 and 2008 and the GSPC's alliance with al-Qaeda was the 'dead cat bounce' of Algerian militancy. The comment may have been premature—cats have nine lives after all — but was not entirely unjustified.

These examples confirm Christine Ammer's view (quoted at the start of this answer) that "the term has been extended [from a specific situation in financial markets] to similar phenomena.