Stalled stock market unnerves small investors - and that's good - Yahoo Finance

Stalled stock market unnerves small investors - and that's good - Yahoo Finance: "The little guy has lost patience with this do-nothing market.

The fresh weekly survey by the American Association of Individual Investors showed those who are bullish on stocks sank to a mere 20% of all respondents, down more than 7% in a week and far below the long-term average near 39%.

For some perspective, at the end of 2014, with U.S. stock indexes slightly lower than they are now, more than 50% said they were bullish. The bearish contingent this week was above 38%, the highest tally since the middle of the nasty 9% October market drop.

What’s striking is that such low optimism among retail investors comes as the major stock indexes are up a touch for the year and have hovered near all-time highs for months now. This overlay of skepticism, using contrarian logic, is a net positive for the market outlook.

The S&P 500 Wednesday jumped above the 2100 mark in a bounce of a bit more than 1%. That was the 17th time the index has crossed that 2100 level just since late April. It closed on Dec. 30 at 2090, so we’ve been running in deep sand but without collapsing yet.

What appears to be going on is a tiresome, low-energy trading range has exhausted investors, giving them time to wonder and worry over what could go wrong rather than what’s working."



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