LIVE MARKETS-Individual investor bears notch a record streak - AAII

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INDIVIDUAL INVESTOR BEARS NOTCH A RECORD STREAK - AAII

Individual investor pessimism over the short-term outlook for U.S. stocks pulled back slightly in the latest American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) Sentiment Survey. With this, optimism also dipped, while neutral sentiment rose.

Meanwhile, a little over a third of investors surveyed said they were favoring dividend stocks right now, while small caps are garnering little attention.

AAII reported that bearish sentiment, or expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, dipped 2.0 percentage points to 56.9%. Bearish sentiment is above its historical average of 31.0% for the 20th time in 22 weeks.

Of note, this was the eighth week in a row that bearish sentiment has been above 50%, which makes it the longest such streak in the history of the survey.

Bullish sentiment, or expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, dropped 3.1 percentage points to 25.4%. Bullish sentiment is below its historical average of 37.5% for the 14th time in 16 weeks.

Neutral sentiment, or expectations that stock prices will stay essentially unchanged over the next six months, increased 5.2 percentage points to 17.7%. Neutral sentiment is below its historical average of 31.5% for the 39th time in 41 weeks.

With these changes, the bull-bear spread edged up around 1 percentage points to –31.5% from –30.4% last week. The spread is below its historical average of 6.5% for the 15th time in 17 weeks.

In this week's special question AAII asked its members what type of stocks they are favoring right now.

Here is AAII's graphic showing how they responded:

(Terence Gabriel)

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