The S&P 500 has continued to hit new lows in the past week, and some sentiment readings have reflected that negative tone. The AAII sentiment survey was not necessarily one of those as this week saw a mixed result. For starters, bullish sentiment actually ticked up to 30.1% from 27.8%. That ends a streak of three straight weeks of declines as bullish sentiment was above 40% as recently as the first week of September.

While bullish sentiment went the other way of price action, bears did increase slightly from 40.9% to 41.6%. That brings the total increase in bears over the past three weeks to 12.4%, the largest three-week increase since late August.

That means that on net, AAII sentiment actually shifted slightly more bullish this week. The bull-bear spread continues to be negative (meaning more investors are reporting bearish than bullish sentiment), but that reading was higher at -11.5 this week.

Other sentiment surveys were not as hopeful.  Both the NAAIM Exposure index and Investors Intelligence survey saw readings shift more bearish in the latest week's data.  In fact, both of those surveys' readings have been more bearish week over week in each of the past three weeks.  All plugged into our sentiment composite, that has outweighed the modestly more bullish reading in the AAII survey. As a result, the composite indicates sentiment levels are 0.69 standard deviations more bearish than what has historically been the norm.  While not exactly an extreme, especially in the wake of the past couple of years, that is the most bearish read on sentiment in just over six months.

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