Investors are getting more fearful. Why that’s good for the stock market
The stock market is off to a solid start to 2025 with the S & P 500 hitting a fresh record on Wednesday, but investor surveys suggest there’s plenty of skepticism out there. That may mean the rally has plenty of fuel left. The latest weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors showed that just 25.4% of respondents expected stocks to rise over the next six month. On the other hand, 40.6% predicted stocks would decline over that period, for a negative gap of more than 15 percentage points. By contrast, the historical averages for the survey are 37.5% bullish and 31% bearish. “The spread between AAII Bullish Sentiment and AAII Bearish Sentiment dropped deeper into bearish territory even as the US equity market rallied last week,” Bank of America’s Stephen Suttmeier wrote in a note to clients, pointing out that the indicator fell as low as -26 in November 2023. That November 2023 data point is an example of why the weak sentiment could be a reason for optimism. It came during a great year for the stock market, but shortly after a sell-off for stocks in October. That moment of fear proved to be ill-founded, however, and stocks rallied into the end of the year and throughout 2024. .SPX 5Y mountain The bull market in the S & P 500 has overcome other periods of weakness and negative investor sentiment. RBC Capital Markets strategist Lori Calvasina said in a note that the sentiment reading is a sign that the market has room to move higher, but it might take a little more time for investor confidence to bottom out. “This data set tells us that the current period of stock market malaise may not be done yet, as the four-week average hasn’t yet returned to one standard deviation below the long-term average, a level that helped mark the lows in US equities in the fall of 2023,” Calvasina said. “But the removal of froth in investor sentiment that was evident in this survey in October 2024 admittedly improves the setup for stocks over the next 6-12 months,” she added.
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