The S&P 500 has managed to rise 1.15% in the past week, but sentiment has barely reflected the positive tone. After climbing to 42.2% last week, AAII bullish sentiment dropped right back down to 34.4% this week. That is the largest one-week drop in a month although it doesn’t leave bullish sentiment at any sort of new low.

The bulls didn’t move to the bearish camp, however. In fact, bearish sentiment fell to 29.2%, which is the lowest reading since the week of August 10.

Because the declines in bullish sentiment outpaced the drop in bears, the spread between the two dropped to +5.2.

Given both bulls and bears dropped, neutral sentiment picked up the difference. As shown below, neutral sentiment rose to 36.4% this week, which was the highest reading since the week of May 18th when it was slightly higher at 37.4%.

While the AAII sentiment survey did not see any sort of particularly noteworthy moves this week, the equity put/call ratio did notch a new high yesterday. As shown below, over the past couple of months, the ratio has begun to turn higher with yesterday seeing the highest reading since March 10th. At 1.35, that ratio also measures in the top 1% of all readings since 1995. Remember, a reading above 1 means there are more put buyers (negative bets) than call buyers (positive bets).

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