I’m an optimist by nature. Somewhat of a Ted Lasso, if I’m being honest. But this market is testing my mettle – just like I’m sure it’s testing yours!
Frankly, that might be just the thing that “saves” us. Let me explain why. Here’s my MoneyShow Chart of the Day. It shows the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) bearish sentiment index going back to the Great Financial Crisis.
You can see that 59.2% of the investors surveyed reported being bearish in the most recent week. That’s essentially tied with the readings we saw at the start of this bull market in October 2022. It’s also HIGHER than we saw at the depths of the Covid-19 collapse!
In fact, you have to go all the way back to March 2009 to find a significantly higher number (70.3%). As a refresher, that’s when the S&P 500 bottomed out at 666, then roared higher for years.
A separate sentiment survey from Investors Intelligence just showed the spread between bears and bulls approaching levels we’ve only seen twice in the past half-decade. They were around the Covid selloff low in 2020 and the 2022 low that marked the start of this bull run.
That begs a very important question: If everyone’s bearish, who’s left to sell?
I’m not saying stocks are going to turn around on a dime and rocket to new highs immediately. I’m not saying further selling is out of the question. I AM saying this isn’t a good time to press bearish bets. And I AM saying it might make sense to do some dip-buying, if only for a trading bounce.
