By Elliott Wave International
Yes, there’s been a recent pickup in stock market volatility, but overall, bullish sentiment remains very much alive and well.
Indeed, here’s a Feb. 18 Yahoo! Finance headline:
A Bull Market is Here.
On April 9, a Fox Business headline reflects the views of a well-known investment manager:
Fed doesn’t matter in this bull market
An extreme in bullish sentiment also shows up in the Advisor and Investor Model, which is a very broad measure of market sentiment compiled by SentimenTrader.com. The model is also known as the AIM Index.
This chart and commentary from the April Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, a monthly publication which covers major U.S. financial markets, provide insight:
The AIM Index constantly fluctuates between extremes; what’s unparalleled about it now is how long it’s been pinned to the top of its range. After hitting its highest possible reading of 1.0 on December 19, it stayed above .90 for the entirety of the first quarter for all but one week. This relentless bullish buzz is represented here by the index’s 20-week average. At 0.93, the April 2 reading is the highest in 53 years.
Yes, it’s possible that this dogged bullish sentiment could persist even longer. Yet, as you might imagine, Elliott Wave International considers extremes in market sentiment to be major red flags.
The April Elliott Wave Theorist, a monthly publication which analyzes major financial and cultural trends, reveals another cautionary sign via this chart and commentary:
As many pundits are saying, the market is not beyond the valuation of 2021, so what’s the problem? But that was the year of the most overvalued U.S. stock market of all time, from which broad indexes such as the Russell 2000 have not recovered. That optimism has returned to an equivalent level is a big deal. …
This is an especially critical time to keep on top of the stock market’s Elliott wave pattern.
If you’re unfamiliar with Elliott wave analysis, read Frost & Prechter’s Elliott Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior, which is the definitive text on the subject. Here’s a quote from the book:
[Ralph N.] Elliott recognized that not news, but something else forms the patterns evident in the market. Generally speaking, the important analytical question is not the news per se, but the importance the market places or appears to place on the news. In periods of increasing optimism, the market’s apparent reaction to an item of news is often different from what it would have been if the market were in a downtrend. It is easy to label the progression of Elliott waves on a historical price chart, but it is impossible to pick out, say, the occurrences of war, the most dramatic of human activities, on the basis of recorded stock market action. The psychology of the market in relation to the news, then, is sometimes useful, especially when the market acts contrarily to what one would “normally” expect.
If you’d like to read the entire online version of Elliott Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior, you can get complimentary access by following this link: Elliott Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior.
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline This “Bullish Buzz” Reaches Highest Level in 53 Years. EWI is the world’s largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts led by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.