Individual Investors Expressing Equity Market Skepticism

Individual investors continue to express a low level of enthusiasm for stocks if the AAII sentiment survey is any indication. Today's AAII Sentiment Survey report noted individual investor bullish sentiment declined 9.9 percentage points to 24.4% with most of the decline showing up in the bearishness reading which increased 9.7 points to 47.8%. The bull/bear spread now stands at a wide -23.4 percentage points.

Since early March the 8-period moving average of the bullishness reading has been trending lower and has reached 29.1% in today's survey release. Of course the moving average is less volatile and with investor sentiment readings being contrarian measures the moving average level of the bullishness reading is indicative of market turning points. No one data point is the holy grail to the market, but it is interesting that the individual investors continues to express cautiousness towards equities.