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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James F. Hopkins who wrote (114833)	7/29/2001 10:20:29 AM
From: Perspective	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Saw that too. This one's actually pretty easy to understand; they even give a pretty good idea of the reason in the article. They asked investors if they thought they would meet their investment goals in the next twelve months. Well, since they were expecting 20% annual returns forever, and they now see they aren't going to get that, they are "pessimistic". Are they still at record overweight equity ownership levels? Yep. The only reliable sentiment numbers appear to be those by Investor's Intelligence. Even the AAII numbers are suspect. The way that they ask the questions somehow allows for total inversions of "investor sentiment" in the space of five days, which obviously means the numbers have little significance. You want to gauge more than how the investing public "feels" on any given day; you are interested in what they are doing with their money. When individual investors finally start throwing in the towel, and insiders start to belly up to the bar, that's when I'll become interested in equities again. BC

To: James F. Hopkins who wrote (114833)	8/3/2001 3:34:40 PM
From: pater tenebrarum	Respond to of 436258

sounds like a good strategy to me...and i agree with your comment on the polls...generally very unreliable.

To: James F. Hopkins who wrote (114833)	8/3/2001 5:36:05 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 436258

re: investor sentiment polls: I agree, that they are unreliable. I follow flows into stock mutual funds. This measures what individual investors are actually doing, as opposed to what they are saying. Those flows went negative earlier this year (usually a sign of a bottom), and are now modestly up, but still a long, long way from where they were at the Bubble peak. I, too, am not doing much at the moment. I'll add some long positions if the Nas retests it's lows (1600). I'll sell more into strength. The SOX has almost made a 50% move off it's prior low, and that is a sell signal (assuming you think it's just a bear rally).