The bulls are on the loose again – Optimism reaches alarming level

Print

The latest investors’ sentiment towards German large cap stocks nearly reaches an all-time high. Since inception in 2001, the sentix Global Investor Survey has only shown comparable levels twice. The current sentiment level bur-dens not only stock markets in the near future, but also signals medium-term effects.

The latest sentix Sentiment Index for German large cap stocks reaches nearly the highest level ever recorded since inception in 2001. The sentix Sentiment captures market expectations of surveyed investors for a one month period; expressing an emotions spectrum from fear to greed. Lately, almost 65% of survey participants indicate that they are “bullish” (optimistic) towards German large caps, whereas only 8% are “bearish”. The presented index value of 0.57 (see graphic) represents the difference between bulls and bears. The message of the ECB to engage more active in financial markets and prop up asset prices has not failed to reach its target audience. Technically, an extreme positive sentiment reading is an indicator for an overstretched market. Therefore, a contrarian signal. An overhang of bulls must equilibrate to the level of bears in the market via a stock price adjustment, eventually.

  20151123 iif sentiment dax eng

Linked to the stock price adjustment process in the short-run is a more far-reaching message: As the sentiment reached comparable positive levels only twice in the indicator’s history, the subsequent effect was that investors had to bear significant losses in the year after. That this time is going to be the same is not guaranteed, yet. However, in financial markets it can be quite painful to strongly believe “this time is different”.

Background

The sentix Sector sentiment is a monthly survey being conducted since 2001 among individual and institutional inves-tors via the internet. The survey is run around the second Friday of each month. Investors are asked about their six-month expectations regarding 19 European stocks sectors. They can indicate whether they expect a sector to outper-form, to perform as the market or to underperform. The survey results are normalised over all sectors and calculated as so-called z-scores. Z-scores are standard deviations from the mean of a given sample. A value of +1 for a sector sen-timent means, for instance, that the expectations for the sector stand one standard deviation above the mean expec-tation for all sectors.

The current sentix Sector Sentiment survey was conducted from November 19 to November 21, 2015. 1.021 individual and institutional investors took part in it.

We use cookies and third-party services that store information in the end device of a site visitor or retrieve it there. We then process the information further. This all helps us to provide you with our basic services (user account), to save the language selection, to optimally design our website and to continuously improve it. We need your consent for the storage, retrieval and processing. You can revoke your consent at any time by deleting the cookies from this website in your browser. Your consent is thereby revoked. You can find further information in our privacy policy. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, see our privacy policy.

I accept cookies from this site.

EU Cookie Directive Module Information