About Those Barron's Sentiment Polls
Something interesting happened over the weekend that you may or may not have missed. Barron's came out with their sentiment numbers that are published just twice a year. As it turns out, 74% of money managers were bullish over the next 6-12 months. This represents the most amount of bulls in the 20-year history of the Barron's Big Money Poll. Here is what the cover page looked like on Saturday:
This is a nice bullish front page, considering there were more bulls in this poll than ever before. But this comes after the S&P500 rallied over 10% and made all-time highs since the last poll in October. Back then, just 46% of those polled were bullish. And look how different the cover of Barron's was in that issue:
The bears were certainly in control of sentiment at that point, as both the poll numbers and the cover tell the story. And let's not blame Barron's, but actually give them credit for expressing in a drawing how the investing public is feeling. It's not Barron's job to be right or wrong, but to print what's going on in the marketplace. And I think they do a fine job. These two covers show that well.
But from a contrarian standpoint, this is interesting for sure. When you dig deeper into the poll numbers, you'll see that just 7% of those polled this Spring were pessimistic, compared to 27% six months ago. 86% of those polled were bullish equities over the next 6-12 months compared with just 11% bullish fixed income (bonds). So plenty of optimism this time around.
I'm looking forward to seeing how these poll results have changed when they come out again in October...
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