There are two main sentiment polls that people follow and one of them is showing something very unusual.
The first is AAII, which polls little small traders who have a membership in that group.
The number of bulls in that poll jumped up in its latest results, but I never use that poll myself, because I think it is useless.
You see the numbers jump up and down and swing so wildly from week to week that I just never have seen any correlation to them and the stock market.
The Investors Intelligence poll which is released every Wednesday to people who pay to subscribe to it though is another story and it is showing something very unusual.
Now it is using data from the week of the last Fed meeting and the last rally in the Nasdaq above 5,000 that lasted for three days.
Hey I guess that is better than the one that lasted for three hours back in February.
But after those three days were up the market turned lower and punched those that bought right in the face.
But that is not bothering gullabulls at all.
According to the latest poll figures:
BULLS: 56.6% (+ 4.6%)
BEARS: 14.1% (-.2%)
CORRECTION: 29.3% ( -4.4%)
Figures over 50% for bulls is considered to be overly optimistic and bothersome from a contrarian standpoint.
What is interesting though is that this is the lowest number of bulls since 1987 and there has not been a reading this low in all of the years I have been in the market since the mid-1990's.
There are no bears in this market and no one is worried.
Even the number of people thinking about a potential correction has dropped.
Of course these figures also coincide with a wild orgy of buying that individual investors did in the stock market in the past two weeks according to Trim Tabs.
This is a time when people should be taking profits on positions and raising some cash.
Those that are unable to do that now most likely will never be able to do so and when the next bear market comes will likely hold all of the way down.
Why?
There are two main reasons.
The first is simple laziness. They DO NOT WANT TO THINK OR DO ANY WORK!
Active and smart investing means always learning how to do better and to work to look for the next best thing to invest in.
It does not mean sitting on positions that you own that have gone up to bubble valuations and then sitting there and doing nothing but convincing yourself that your positions will go up forever for you as a way to avoid doing any work.
The second reason is because many people come to identify their own self-worth with their investment account.
Such people come to love their positions and think the positions are them.
They cannot sell, because for them that means giving up on their own personal identity.
They convince themselves that they are smart for owning the stocks they do and therefore for them to sell means going against that so they can't sell.
Of course that is all very silly, but it takes silly thinking and behavior to be a gullabull.
Who wants to be publicly bearish in a market now dominated by such people?
CNBC feeds the gullabulls comments like these to keep them believing:
The market drops, but do not worry will be the refrain we will hear from now on.