The S&P 500 has encountered some selling pressure this week, but that hasn’t stopped sentiment from continuing its grind higher.  The weekly AAII sentiment survey saw 48.0% of respondents report as bullish this week up from 41.5% last week.  That puts bullish sentiment at the highest level since the first week of July when it was 0.6 percentage points higher than it is now.

The increase in bullish sentiment borrowed from bears as less than a quarter of respondents reported having negative sentiment for the first time since the last week of July.  Similar to bullish sentiment, bearish sentiment is now at the lowest level since the first week of July when it came in at 22.2%.

Overall, sentiment continues to favor bulls to a wide margin. As a result of the inverse moves in sentiment, the bull-bear spread rose to 24 from 15.5 last week. Again, that is levels not seen since early July.

Neutral sentiment also declined this week falling by 4.5 percentage points to 28%.  Unlike bullish and bearish sentiment, that reading is basically in the middle of the past several months’ range as the reading has generally hovered around the 30% level. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.