Bearish newsletter sentiment moved up to 47.2%, which was 6% higher than last week. Bullish sentiment declined to 33.2%. There’s no doubt that the recent market turmoil has shaken investor confidence in the markets. This is actually higher than the levels seen at the 2002 bear market bottom, as well as the 1998 one too.
One has to go back to the 1990 – 1995 timeframe to see higher levels of bearishness (nearly 60%).
The early and late 80’s also had very high levels of bearish sentiment (50% to 60%).
Most, if not all of these coincided with market bottoms, or at least markets that were working on bottoming processes.