Hulbert: Wall of Worry Remains Intact

Mark Hulbert says the market’s recent rally shows that the summer troubles were merely a correction in an ongoing bull market, and says sentiment remains relatively low — a good sign.

“A bull market can be thought of as a bucking bronco in a rodeo, trying its darndest to throw everyone off its back on the way to the other side of the ring,” Hulbert writes in his latest MarketWatch column. “And it’s doing an awfully good job of that: Even though the stock market is today back to where it was at the April high, if not higher, the average short-term market timer is nowhere close to being as bullish as he or she was then.”

Hulbert says his Hulbert Stock Newsletter Sentiment Index (HSNSI), which measures the level of equity exposure among a subset of the shortest-term market timers he tracks, jumped more than 20 percentage points during Thursday’s rally. But it still stands at just 45.7%, lower than it was two months ago when the Dow was trading up to a thousand points lower. And it’s far below the 65.5% equity exposure back in late April. “This, once again, is evidence of a strong wall of worry for the bull market to continue climbing,” he says.

 

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