Everybody is a contrarian indicator!! What is the actual sentiment like?
August 22, 2010
– Comments (32)
I am bearish. I point to the bearish macro. I point to the number of bullish posts and use it as a contrarian indicator.
You are bullish. You point to the bullish macro. You point to the number of bearish posts and use it as a contrarian indicator.
This is (obviously) a dumb game involving confirmation (or non-confirmation) bias. We will each seek out posts to prove our points regarding the level of sentiment. So instead of playing a dumb game, how about actually looking at a few sentiment measures? Here are are the two biggest (Equity Put/Call ratio and the VIX) and a slightly less well-known one (Bullish percentage of SPX stocks), with a 5 year history to put them into perspective.
I could also drag out a bunch of investor sentiment surveys and they would say materially the same thing. But those are less useful, because they rely on what people say and not what they do. These are measures taken directly from the market, and are a measure of investors actions.
Feel free to interpret however you want (I give my opinion on the chart), but I would suggest using numbers instead of "there are so many blogs that are [bullish/bearish] that it must mean we are going [down/up]".
ENLARGE
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