By Philip Lawlor, head of Global Markets Research
Technical measures of investor confidence (or fear) are useful tools for gauging impending contrarian shifts in equity market performance. So what are these sentiment indicators telling us now?
Our proprietary Composite Sentiment Indicator ((CSI)) blends four technical barometers of investor sentiment-i.e., the breadth of stock overbought and oversold Relative Strength Indicators (RSI) and the percent of stocks hitting their 52-week highs or lows-into a single Z-score. CSI scores measure the degree to which current readings are above or below their long-term averages, and range from 1 (levels