Permabulls always say everyone's bearish.<\/p>\n
And\u00a0permabears\u00a0always say everyone's bullish.<\/p>\n
But let's look at the actual numbers to see how the crowd actually feels.<\/p>\n
With the US missile attack on Syria and the NFP report miss, now is the perfect time for a sentiment update.<\/p>\n
Last week, the bears were out in force<\/strong><\/a> as we digested near all-time highs.<\/p>\n But with the bulls still holding steady, let's see if anything's changed.<\/p>\n 1) VIX Spread – Neutral<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0VIX <\/strong>spiked a bit post-Syria, but interestingly enough, it's now DOWN on the day — even after the NFP miss.<\/p>\n That has the 3-month VIX spread is at +2.16 which indicates that traders are starting to grow skittish. Readings around +2 are neutral.<\/p>\n 2) CNN Fear & Greed Index – Bearish<\/strong><\/p>\n The Fear & Greed Index is at 43, up slightly from 34 last week.<\/p>\n F&G operates on a 1-100 scale, and a reading of 43 means traders are moderately fearful.<\/p>\n 3) AAII Sentiment – Bearish<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 28.3% of individual investors are bullish, down from 30.2% last week.<\/p>\n This is well below the long-term average of 38.5%.<\/p>\n 4<\/strong>) CBOE Equity Put-Call – Bearish<\/strong><\/p>\n The CBOE Equity-Put Call ratio was at 0.66 yesterday with a 3-day moving average is 0.63. This is indicates that traders are slightly bearish.<\/p>\n 5) ISE Sentiment – Neutral<\/strong><\/p>\n The ISE Sentiment Index is at 108 (108 calls bought for every 100). The 10 day moving average is just 90. This indicates that demand for put options continues to outstrip that for calls.<\/p>\n However, I'll actually call this neutral because the ISE Sentiment index has been so down for so long that 90 is actually high relative to recent history.<\/p>\n Please note: I am strongly considering dumping ISE Sentiment from this weekly update simply because it's almost always reading bearish no matter what happens in the market.<\/p>\n I may replace it with the\u00a0CBOE Skew Index<\/strong>, which measures how much traders are paying for protection against tail risk.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n Out of 5 sentiment indicators, we have:<\/p>\n 0 bullish This shows even more bearishness\u00a0than last week<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Note that the all of these indicators except for the VIX spread, were released BEFORE the attack on Syria and the nonfarm payrolls miss.<\/p>\n
\n3 bearish
\n2 neutral<\/p>\n