Investor Sentiment

You can get a good sense of the overall market sentiment from online resources. Each week Barron’s publishes a set of numbers called Investor Sentiment Readings, and this includes the current sentiment and that of the previous two weeks. To get to it you go to www.barrons.com, scroll down and click on Market Lab, and there you will find a great deal of financial information, including the ISR. Often the sentiment will be in the middle of the range, but if you see it going to extremes you may want to prepare for a contrarian stance. If the sentiment is too bullish, that may herald a bear market, and vice versa.

There is another highly respected sentiment service on the Internet, and this is from Investors Intelligence, at www.investorsintelligence.com. They survey over 120 different investment newsletters and report their findings on the sentiments expressed. This service has been going since 1963, and you can even obtain historical data if you wish. This is however a paid subscription service and the weekly sentiment poll costs an annual £132 at the time of writing.

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