Live Markets: Bulls charge, bears retreat in AAII's latest sentiment survey

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BULLS CHARGE, BEARS RETREAT IN AAII'S LATEST SENTIMENT SURVEY
Individual investors accentuating the positive, according to the American Association for Individual Investors' (AAII) most recent sentiment survey.
The results show bullish sentiment—or expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months—leapt 8.4 percentage points to 44.9%, nudging above its long-term historical average of 37.5% for the first time in six weeks.
The bears—who believe stock prices will fall in the next six months—retreated 3.2 pps to 36.1%, but remained north of its 31% historical average for the 20th straight week.
The neutral camp—which sees no change in stock prices between now and December—shrank by 5.1 pps to 18.9%. AAII calls the reading "unusually low" and points out that neutral sentiment has now been south of its historic level of 31.5% for the 101 of the last 103 weeks.
Taken together, the bull-bear spread (bullish minus bearish) widened by 11.6 pps to 8.8%, poking above its 6.5% long-term average for the second time in 20 weeks. 
AAII's special question to its members this week was how the the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran has influenced their economic expectations.
The biggest share of respondents (34.4%) said it had little to no impact, while 31.2% said the deal made them more pessimistic. Those who said the deal made them more optimistic accounted for 27.4% of the total, while 7% were unsure or had no opinion on the matter.
     
(Stephen Culp)
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AAII investor sentiment https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-STOCKS/egpbwydravq/aaii.png