The slow descent from fevered optimisim to neutrality among fund management groups has been in evidence from its peak in May 2013. Both for the broad US equity market and the US small cap space, fund managers have slowly been moving to neutral.
Until February 2014, that is, since when attitudes have moved sharply up.
The data come from the Expert Investor Europe Fund Manager Sentiment Survey, a bespoke database we run that tracks the attitudes of 20 global asset managers towards a series of asset classes, asking them what their 12-month outlook is.
It should be noted that during this period, sentiment never actually became negative – just dropped close to neutral.