By:

George Smith, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Quantitative Strategist, LPL Financial, Scott Brown, CMT, Technical Market Strategist, LPL Financial, and Ryan Detrick, CMT, Chief Market Strategist, LPL Financial

It’s been a very tough start to the year with both stocks and bonds down sharply. Adding to the “wall of worry” for investors are the highest levels of U.S. inflation in decades, an aggressive Federal Reserve (Fed), Chinese lockdowns, and continuing war in Europe. So perhaps it is no surprise that investor sentiment polls are showing signs of extreme pessimism. Extremes in sentiment tend to be contrarian indicators for the stock market over the short-to-medium-term, but have we really seen extreme pessimism yet? Below we look at some of the latest investor sentiment data and share our thoughts about the disparity between what investors are saying and what they are actually doing.

Read the full commentary here: weekly-market-commentary-5.9.2022