We use sentiment to help put the behavior of the stock market into context.
When looking at markets, it’s easy to see what stocks are doing. All you have to do is look.
But what are people thinking? That’s what we want to know.
When everyone is bullish, it’s hard for stocks to go up in price at the same rate. When everyone turns bearish, that’s historically a great time to be putting money to work.
Coming into August, sentiment was running hot. The VIX was at 10, the put/call ratio was muted, newsletter writers were giving us some of their most bullish readings of all-time, and our sentiment composite was as complacent as it’s ever been.
Boy did that change quickly.
We just saw the largest week over week spike in bears among individual investors since 2022, just as this bull market was getting started.
Look at that spike this week: [Read more…]
