The index shows global investor confidence to have risen – by 9.3 points to 97.5 from October’s 88.2 – but the geographical breakdown looks rather curious.
North America investors are shrugging off the somnolent recovery and the last-chance-saloon feel of QE II to be 12.2 points more confident in November – 97.1 – than they were in October when the index registered a mere 84.9.
Likewise, the Europeans seem unconcerned about the possibility of sovereign debt restructuring or that the continent’s banks may still be sitting on assets that smell more than decomposing Dublin Bay prawns. Confidence among European investors is apparently up a stunning 15.9 points to 112.2 from 96.3 in October.
It is Asian investors, located in the hotbed of recovery hopes, who display some restraint: confidence has declined by 8.0 points from October’s level of 103.2 to 95.2 in November. Furthermore the decline would have been larger – 9.1 points – had there not been a re-weighting “within the Asian index to better reflect the relative importance of institutional investors across the various markets in that region,” says State Street.
The index is not survey-based but is quantitative. It “assigns a precise meaning to changes in investor risk appetite: the greater the percentage allocation to equities, the higher is risk appetite or confidence.”