Every month, as part of its Investor Confidence Index survey, Spectrem asks more than 1,000 investors to imagine someone handing them an extra $100,000 to invest, and then asks them to detail their investment plans for that imaginary money.

In January of 2020, almost 20 percent of those funds went into individual stock investing, the highest percentage for that category for that question in the past six months.

That response aligns with the results of the Investor Confidence indices, which saw both the Spectrem Affluent Investor Confidence Index (SAICI®) and the Spectrem Millionaire Confidence Index (SMICI®) climb in January. The Millionaire index rose 14 points, from 1 to 15, nearing the highest rating of the past 12 months.

Another category of investing intention in the January survey that saw a significant increase from previous months was stock mutual funds, which would receive 34.3 percent of the imaginary funds (the highest percentage for that category since December of 2017).  

There was a corresponding dive in investing in cash products like bank accounts or money market funds, down to 19.2 percent of the $100,000, on average. It was June of last year the last time that choice received such a low percentage of the funds.

There was also a notable drop in annuity investing, which is another sign that investors thought it is a good time to invest in equities rather than in safer products.

Only 3.1 percent of the $100,000 was placed in individual bonds, and that is the lowest percentage in that product since July of 2018.

The details on the Spectrem Confidence Indices are available in Spectrem’s Visual Analytics dashboard as part of the Wealth Spectrem and Wealthy Investor Series research packages.

 

 

 

 

 

©2020 Spectrem Group

 

 

Keywords: investing, investors, advisors, Spectrem, stock, stock mutual funds, index