Bulls And Bears Back Down

The S&P 500 has fallen over the past week, and that has given sentiment reason to shift lower. The latest sentiment survey from AAII showed only 34.1% of respondents reported as bullish this week, down from 40% last week. That 5.9-percentage point decline is the largest single-week drop in a month, although bullish sentiment is still above levels from two weeks ago.

Even though bullish sentiment dropped, those losses did not flow into bearish sentiment. In fact, bearish sentiment also fell by 1.9 percentage points. On top of the 5.1 percentage point decline in the prior week, at 34.6% bearish sentiment is unchanged versus one month ago.

The larger drop in bulls versus bears did result in the bull-bear spread shifting back into negative territory. While not a wide margin, bears outnumber bulls.

Neutral sentiment came in with the lowest reading in a year last week, implying increasingly polarized investor sentiment. However, the declines in both bulls and bears this week resulted in neutral sentiment to climb up to 31.3%, which is the highest reading in three weeks and right back in line with the historical average.

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