Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, February 27th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far,

it's a country bear jamboree. Bearish sentiment among individual investors searched the highest level in two and

half years this past week as the tech and momentum trades showed some vulnerability. The American

Association of Individual Investors said in its survey for the week ending February 26th, that

the bearish camp, those who think the market will be lower in the next six months, jumped to

60.6% from 40.5% the week before.

Bulls fell to 19.4% from 29.2%. The spread between bulls and bears jumped to 41.2% in favor of

the bears, up from 11.3%. Bearish sentiment hasn't been that high since September 2022, when the level

hit 60.87%. That year, the S&P 500 fell 25%

from January to October and saw the worst performance in the first six months of the year since

1970. Before that, you'd have to go back to the financial crisis to see bearish levels above 60%,

with bear sentiment hitting 70.27% in March 2009.

The spread of 41.2% to the Bears hasn't been this high since it hit 43.1% in September

2022. Before that, it would be March 2009's 51.4%.

The stock market has seen a recent stumble, with the S&P 500 off 3% from its recent high,

but it's still up 1.3% year to date.

The NASDAQ is off just 1.2% for the year, and the Dow is up 2.1%.

The bond market may hold a small clue to the pessimism.

The 10-year treasury yield has dropped from near 4.8% in January to close to 4.3%.

Given inflation expectations rising, the drop-in rates

looks more like pessimism on growth, which could bring a U.S. recession back into the conversation.

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