Even though the S&P 500 has essentially traded sideways over the past week, sentiment saw a slight improvement.  AAII’s weekly survey of individual investors found 47.1% of respondents reported as bullish. That is up slightly from 45.5% last week and the highest level of bullish sentiment since the week of December 10th.

At the same time, bearish sentiment has continued to decline.  Coming in at 25.4%, bearish sentiment has now declined for three straight weeks falling 12.9 percentage points in that span.  That is the largest decline in a three-week span since October of 2019 when bearish sentiment fell 15.53 percentage points and leaves bearish sentiment at the lowest level since the week of December 24th when less than a quarter of respondents reported as bearish.

This week’s moves in sentiment resulted in the bull-bear spread rising for a third week in a row.  With a spread of 21.7 percentage points, sentiment favors bulls by the widest margin since the first week of December.

Like bearish sentiment, neutral sentiment took a small move lower dropping 0.7 percentage points to 27.6%. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.