In last week’s update on investor sentiment, we noted that the extremely depressed levels of bullishness that we saw in the latest AAII survey seemed “a bit overdone.”  In this week’s update, we did see an improvement in optimism, but overall, sentiment remains muted at best.  In this week’s survey, bullish sentiment increased from 25.0% up to 29.28%. So, even after the increase, bullish sentiment came in below 30% for the third straight week, below 40% for the 34th straight week, and below 50% for a record 140th straight week. In addition to the record 140 straight weeks below 50%, the current stretch of 34 weeks below 40% is also just the third time in the history of the survey that optimism has been below that level for more than 30 weeks, with the prior two streaks coming in 2015 and 2016.

As bullish sentiment increased this week, bearish sentiment ticked lower, falling from 39.89% down to 34.98%, marking the third straight week that bears have outnumbered bulls.