Volatility In Sentiment On The Rise Too

With the S&P 500 swinging between positive and negative moves lately, sentiment on the part of individual investors has also been seeing its fair share of ups and downs. According to the weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullish sentiment declined from 36.8% down to 33.2%. That’s not much of a move, but it is below average and comes after a two-week stretch where it dropped close to 11 percentage points only to rise more than 10 percentage points the following week. Basically, investors can’t make up their minds.

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Bearish sentiment has been just as volatile.Last week, bearish sentiment declined 7 percentage points to 21.33%. This week it rose by 7 percentage points right back up to 28.5%.

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Finally, neutral sentiment spiked back over 40% in the last two weeks, only to fall nearly 4 points this week to a still high 38.2%.

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