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!
Each week, a random selection of NZSA members are sent an email to complete the survey. If you wish to participate in the NZ Investor Sentiment Index Survey anyway, you can click on this link anytime – also contained in each Briefing newsletter. The sentiment survey is conducted weekly from Thursday 12:01am to Wednesday 11:45pm.
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 – April 23th, 2025
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 40.0%.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will essentially stay unchanged over the next six months, increased by 4.2 percentage points to 20.0%.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 40.0%.
- The level of optimism among individual investors is highest for IT and energy (both at 44.4%), followed by primary sector (36.8%). Bullish sentiment is lowest for industrials (all at 10.5%), followed by consumer discretionary (26.3%) and financials (31.6%).
- The level of neutral sentiment is highest for health care (57.9%), followed by primary sector (52.6%) and industrials (42.1%). Neutral sentiment is lowest for consumer discretionary (21.1%), followed by financials (26.3%) and IT (27.8%).
- The level of pessimism is highest for consumer discretionary (52.6%), followed by industrials (47.4%) and financials (42.1%). Pessimism is lowest for health care (5.3%), followed by primary sector (10.5%) and energy (16.7%).
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, decreased by 9.1 percentage points to 27.8% for Australian stocks and by 25.7 percentage points to 11.1% for U.S. stocks.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay flat over the next six months, increased by 1.5% at 27.8% for Australian stocks and by 6.4 percentage points to 22.2% for U.S. stocks.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, increased by 7.6 percentage points to 44.4% for Australian stocks and by 19.3 percentage points to 66.7% for U.S. stocks.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their small cap shares decreased by 14.1 percertage points to 5.9% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their large cap shares decreased by 1.5 percentage points to 23.5% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their funds increased by 9.4 percentage points to 29.4% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating no change in their equity allocation increased by 15.3 percentage points to 35.3% this week.
- The proportion of investors who express uncertainty about their equity allocation decreased by 9.1 percentage points to 5.9% this week.
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 (excluding ‘outliers’)
- Interestingly, NZ Investors have displayed a greater tendency towards expressing “negative” (bearish) sentiment since the survey’s inception.