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< BACK TO ALL REPORTS

Active managers are nearly all-in

Jason Goepfert
2020-07-23

The latest survey of active investment managers from the NAAIM organization showed that the average manager is 97% exposed to stocks, with even the most bearish manager net long, and a small standard deviation among them (i.e. lots of group-think). We've been discussing this survey since its inception, with the conclusion that it's not necessarily a great contrarian indicator. There have been 11 weeks with similar positioning since 2006, and the S&P 500's forward returns were slightly better than random, but with a worse risk/reward skew. Those weeks were 2007-01-03, 2016-08-17, 2016-11-30, 2016-12-21, 2016-12-28, 2017-09-20, 2017-12-13, 2017-12-20, 2018-06-13, 2018-08-29, and 2019-12-18.

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