TIM Report: Sentiment Declines, Becoming More Neutral

According to the recent TIM (Trade Ideas Monitor) report and the TIM Sentiment Index (TSI), institutional brokers became less bullish over the last five trading days, trending towards neutrality by the end of the week (see previous post or youDevise website for additional information on the TIM report). For the five trading days ending June 18, the number of new long ideas as a percentage of new ideas sent to investment managers declined to 70.92%, compared to 73.66% one week earlier (see last week's post). The intra-week trend was positive. Longs represent 64.92% of all ideas in June.

As for individual securities in the U.S. and North America, the US Natural Gas Fund (NYSE: UNG) and Endo Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ENDP) were the stocks most recommended as longs by institutional brokers, while General Electric (NYSE: GE), CEMEX (NYSE: CX), and Palm (NYSE: PALM) were recommended as shorts.

Once again, the TIM Report appears to be an interesting idea and new source of data. I will continue to monitor it to determine its use for trading - i.e., whether the data is too lagging, or has some leading information, or whether is can be used as a contrarian indicator.