After several weeks of stock market gains, it should come as no surprise that individual investors are growing more positive.  According to the weekly sentiment survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullish sentiment rose from 29.96% up to 33.78% for the fifth weekly gain in the last six.  Make no mistake, however, investors are far from bullish.  This week’s reading represents the 55th week in the last 56 where bullish sentiment was below 40%, and to have just one-third of investors calling themselves bullish after five weekly increases over a six-week period is practically unheard of.

While bullish sentiment is on the rise, bears are a lot less prevalent.  After hitting a level of 48.7% on February 11th, bearish sentiment has been more than cut in half to this week’s total of 23.7%. In a mirror image of bullish sentiment, bearish sentiment has now declined in five of the last six weeks.