Investor Sentiment: Summer Doldrums

It is the end of the month. It is the end of the quarter. It is the week before a holiday. This gives the market a slight upward bias for the coming week. In the intermediate term, the “Dumb Money” indicator remains bullish to an extreme degree, and typically this is a bearish signal. This is a real head wind for the market. Since the “dumb money” turned bullish 8 weeks ago, the S&P500 has lost a little more than 1%, the NASDAQ 100 is up about 6% and the Russell 2000 is flat. For the week ahead, I suspect the shorter term bullish bias and the longer term bearish bias will make the markets choppy and range bound. It is the summer doldrums!

The “Dumb Money” indicator is shown in figure 1. 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.

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” is neutral.

Figure 2. “Smart Money” Indicator/ weekly

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