Even the Quants Are Wary of the Stock Market

The S&P 500 Index was little changed one day after setting a new record. That makes perfect sense. The market just capped one of its strongest periods of the year, having risen a little more than 5% over the previous three weeks. It’s as good a time as any to reassess the broad landscape. And when they do, traders will find that the primary drivers behind the rally remain firmly in place.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with things like irrational exuberance or animal spirits. Rather, the most attractive aspect of the market is the fact that almost nobody believes in it, leaving a lot of cash on the sidelines to come pouring in when the traditional drivers of equities like rising earnings and a stronger economy come back into play. The latest evidence that there is no conviction in the market came in a report by Credit Suisse Group AG’s prime brokerage, which showed that market-neutral quantitative funds had cut their gross stock allocations to the lowest in almost five years. That dovetails with one of the more comprehensive measures of investor sentiment: State Street Global Markets’ monthly index, which is derived from actual trades and covers 15% of the world’s tradeable assets. It shows that investors this year have been less confident in the outlook for equities than even during the financial crisis. And despite this year’s big gains in equities, investors continue to put money into cash. Money-fund assets stood at $3.49 trillion as of last Wednesday, up from $2.88 trillion a year earlier, according to the Investment Company Institute.