Should I feel better? Not by Yale Crash Confidence Measure

The stock market has become more range-bound over the last few weeks, but that has not changed the pessimism in the markets. The Yale School of management has produced a relatively long history of stock market confidence by both institutional and individual investors. http://icf.som.yale.edu/confidence.index/CrashIndex.shtml. The chart shows the confidence that there will be no crash in the next six months. This index reached a low after the end of the tech bubble after which there was a strong equity upturn.

Sentiment is not very strong as we end the year. Consumer confidence also reached a new low this week so this economy needs a good jolt of optimism to get spending and lending to pick-up.