Investors Retreat From Undecided As Bears Become More Common

As equity market volatility has picked up, the American Association of Individual Investors’ weekly poll of sentiment has deteriorated. Back in early January, bears were the second-lowest share of responses in the past decade. Since then, however, they’ve seen their share of the poll tick up by about 13 percentage points. While not at a very high level compared to recent years today, they are the highest since August of 2017. At the same time, investors who are indecisive about the market have seen their share of responses plunge. As shown in the second chart below, investors reporting “Neutral” sentiment are down from 45.2% of responses to 32.7% of responses.