Investor Sentiment: Mockery
The market continues higher, which you are well aware. The sentiment indicators continue to show extreme bullish sentiment amongst the "dumb money", an indifference by the "smart money", and selling by insiders. These are bear signals. In a sense, the market continues to make a mockery of the sentiment indicators. But let's face it, all indicators - whether fundamental or technical - are broken. There is no analysis or tool that could have predicted such a strong and persistent price move 14 months ago. There is no analysis or tool that can predict when this period will end. I hear and read all sorts of reasons why the market will go higher, but from this perspective, most of it is just nonsense as market participants look to explain the unexplainable. This market only goes in one direction rendering all analysis useless. Why do market analysis when there is only decision to make? Some time in the future, these tools will find their mojo again.
And now this from the Department of Broken Records....
The "Dumb Money" indicator looks for extremes in the data from 4 different groups of investors who historically have been wrong on the market: 1) Investor Intelligence; 2) Market Vane; 3) American Association of Individual Investors; and 4) the put call ratio. The "Dumb Money" indicator is bullish to an extreme degree, and this implies that a price move is either nearing its end or the ascent of prices is surely to show. This is our expectation 85% of the time. As discussed previously, not only is the current value extreme it is also less than prior extremes suggesting decreasing bullishness despite higher equity prices. This remains a noteworthy, yet unconfirmed, negative divergence.
Figure 1. "Dumb Money" Indicator/ weekly
The "Smart Money" indicator is shown in figure 2. The "smart money indicator is a composite of the following data: 1) public to specialist short ratio; 2) specialist short to total short ratio; 3) SP100 option traders. The Smart Money indicator is neutral.
Figure 2. "Smart Money" Indicator/ weekly
Figure 3 is a weekly chart of the S&P500 with the InsiderScore "entire market" value in the lower panel. From the InsiderScore weekly report we get the following: transactional volume decrease as the quarter closed but insiders continue to sell with conviction and buy sporadically.
Figure 3. InsiderScore Entire Market/ weekly
Figure 4 is a weekly chart of the S&P500. The indicator in the lower panel measures all the assets in the Rydex bullish oriented equity funds divided by the sum of assets in the bullish oriented equity funds plus the assets in the bearish oriented equity funds. When the indicator is green, the value is low and there is fear in the market; this is where market bottoms are forged. When the indicator is red, there is complacency in the market. There are too many bulls and this is when market advances stall.
Currently, the value of the indicator is 67.52%. Values greater than 58% (arbitrarily chosen) are associated with market tops, and the red dots over the price bars indicate such.
Figure 4. Rydex Total Bull v. Total Bear/ weekly
Shorter term Rydex measures continue to suggest excessive bullishness. This data, which has proved to be very actionable, is available as Premium Content. This service should help you improve your market timing.
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