This collaboration between NZSA and University of Canterbury (UC) Business School is part of our mission to promote a thriving market and to be the voice of investors. A sentiment index will contribute to the understanding of investor behaviour and the overall market and allow you to get first access to the data and make better-informed investment decisions.
Have your say!
If you wish to participate in the NZ Investor Sentiment Index Survey you can do so by updating your member profile at this link. The sentiment survey is conducted weekly from Thursday 12:01am to Wednesday 11:45pm. Each week you will receive a new email invitation to the current survey.
This Week’s Results:
The “amber” section of these dials show the middle quartiles (ie, 25th – 75th percentile) since the NZSA / UC Retail Investor Sentiment survey began in 2020.
This week’s commentary – May 8th, 2024
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, increased by 11.5 percentage points to 26.3%.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will essentially stay unchanged over the next six months, decreased by 0.3 percentage points to 55.3%.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, decreased by 11.2 percentage points to 18.4%.
- The level of optimism among individual investors is highest for IT and energy (both at 37.8%), followed by health care (29.7%). The level of optimism is lowest for consumer discretionary (10.8%), followed by real estate (18.9%) and financials (21.6%).
- The level of neutral sentiment is highest for primary sector (62.2%), followed by energy, health care and industrials (all at 56.8%). Neutral sentiment is lowest for consumer discretionary (29.7%), followed by real estate and financials (both at 51.4%).
- The level of pessimism is highest for consumer discretionary (59.5%), followed by real estate (29.7%) and financials (27.0%). Pessimism is lowest for energy (5.4%), followed by IT (8.1%) and health care (13.5%).
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, increased by 10.3% to 47.4% for Australian stocks and by 16.7% to 50.0% for U.S. stocks.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay flat over the next six months, decreased by 5.0 percentage points to 39.5% for Australian stocks and by 15.0 percentage points to 36.8% for U.S. stocks.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, decreased by 5.4 percentage points to 13.2% for Australian stocks and by 1.7 percentage points to 13.2% for U.S. stocks.
Six-week Retail Investor Sentiment – NZ50 Index
Historic Data
There have been wide variations since the survey began (January 2020) in Investor Sentiment. The following chart shows:
- the lowest recorded response for each type of sentiment (the lower ‘whisker’)
- the recorded responses between 25th – 75th percentile (the ‘box’)
- the median response score – ie, exactly 50% of scores are above and below this number
- the maximum response
- Interestingly, NZ Investors have displayed a greater tendency towards expressing “negative” (bearish) sentiment since the survey’s inception.