Signals when you need them – near important market tops and bottoms 

When the survey was developed by our founder, AW Cohen, he originally expected that the best time to be long in the market was when most advisors were bullish. This proved to be far from the case – a majority of advisors and commentators were almost always wrong at market turning points. Quite simply, professional advisors are just as susceptible to market emotions as individual investors – they become far too greedy at the top of trends and far too fearful near the bottom.

A contrary indicator…but only at extremes

We don’t necessarily take a contrarian view to the newsletter writers in our survey. A large part of the time our sentiment readings remain neutral. We consider the norm to be 45% bulls, 35% bears and 20% neutral. However, we do pay attention to extreme readings in both bulls and bears and also to historically significant runs of more bulls than bears. To summarize, advisors are only wrong when you get too many of them start thinking the same thing.

Four decades of data to set our precedent

Our weekly sentiment data runs consistently back to the 1960’s. Current readings are put into context against historic precedents. 

Our US office has been at the forefront of developing analytical tools now in common use – the NYSE Bullish percentage; the Advisory Sentiment Index; the Broad Industry Group Bullish percentages; and the Industry Group Insider Analysis so it's not surprisingly that our survey has been widely adopted by the investment community as a contrarian indicator and is followed closely by the financial media.

Our indicator has a consistent record for predicting the major market turning points since 1963.  Take out your annual subscription to this valuable investment tool today for just $169.