Weekly Sentiment Update: Traders Are Surprisingly Bearish
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Permabulls always say everyone's bearish.
And permabears always say everyone's bullish.
Neither side provides evidence for their views.
So I like regularly run through a wide variety of sentiment measures to get an accurate reflection of the market's mood.
According to 7 sentiment measures I track, traders appear to be modestly bearish, even though the S&P 500 is still within a stone's throw of the 2193 all-time high.
1) SPX Options Prices – Bearish
SPX options prices show a high put skew. I looked at 10% out of the money 6 month SPX options. There is currently a 9.8 point skew in implied volatilities on the options. That's the 94th percentile.
So relative to calls, traders are paying more for 10% OTM 6 month puts than they have 94% of the time over the past 5 years.
2) ISE Sentiment – Bearish
The ISE Sentiment Index closed at 81 yesterday (81 puts for every 100 calls). And its 10 day moving average is just 78 — a level that indicates bearishness.
3) AAII Sentiment – Bearish
The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 24.0% of individual investors are bullish, well below the long-term average of 38.4%, and below the 2016 YTD average of 28.1%.
Bearish sentiment is at 37.1%, down a bit from last week, but well above the 30.3% long-term average.
4) Wall Street Strategists – Neutral
The average year-end target price for the S&P 500 is 2169, according to Bloomberg. That implies the market does nothing into year-end.
5) CBOE Equity Put-Call – Neutral
The CBOE Equity-Put Call ratio was 0.66 yesterday, which is just below the YTD average of 0.69. This points to neutral sentiment.
6) CNN Fear & Greed Index – Neutral
The Fear & Greed Index is at 50.
F&G operates on a 1-100 scale, and 50 is neutral perfectly neutral.
7) Investors Intelligence – Bullish
Yesterday, the Investors Intelligence Survey of newsletter writers showed a slightly increase in bullishness to 45.2%, snapping a 4-week losing streak.Those calling for correction are at 31.7%, the highest since June 29.
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So we have 3 bearish indicators, 3 neutral indicators, and 1 bullish indicator.
Blend them together and you have a moderately bearish crowd.
I'm hearing a lot of bears say that everyone's complacent… but who are they talking about?
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