Investors are in a very bad mood, at least as bad as in early 2009 when their financial world seemed to be crumbling, according to Jason Zweig’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Too Flustered to Trade: A Portrait of the Angry Investor.”
Zweig’s article cites a revealing study of investor sentiment done by a firm named Decision Research. According to the study,
- 58% of investors believe their future is be “moderately” or “greatly” limited, up from 56% in March 2009
- 59% said they were “moderately” or “very” angry
- 52% said they were moderately or very fearful
- 73% said they worried “about money yesterday,” up from 56% 2? years ago
- Only 11% felt they had a strong or very strong degree of “influence or control” over their financial lives, down from 17% in March 2009
- 87% had little or no trust either in Congress or in bankers and brokers.
One retired public-health physician said he is completely out of stocks and will never invest in them again. His remarks, quoted by Zweig, are emblematic of the Angry Investor: “All the Federal Reserve does is look at the stock market and the big banks and figure out how to bail them out with my money. Then the bankers pay my money out to themselves as bonuses while the Fed keeps on depreciating all the savings that I worked so hard to build up all these years. You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once. And I ain’t gonna lose any more skin.”
Page Perry is an Atlanta-based law firm with over 125 years collective experience representing investors in securities-related litigation and arbitration. While past results are not indicative of future success, Page Perry’s attorneys have recovered over $1,000,000 for clients on more than 45 occasions. For further information, please contact us.