Week 27: Slight Bearishness and Obamacare 6 Million Mark
The moderately bullish projection of 57.7% “higher” to 42.3% “lower” for the period of March 24-28 turned out to be incorrect as the S&P500 ended down 1.86 points for the week.
This week we are back to a slight bearish sentiment for the main question:
Would you guess that the S&P 500 index will move higher or lower next week? (from Monday’s open to Friday’s close; March 30 – April 4)
Higher: 48.6%
Lower: 51.4%
Higher or Lower percentage history.
The confident levels thought were relatively close again this week.
Average of All Guesses: 63.7%
Average For “Higher” Guesses: 60.0%
Average For “Lower” Guesses: 67.2%
Confident levels percentage history.
The standard first open-ended question was:
What economic, political, or other news and events are you expecting to happen next week (March 30 – April 4) that might have a positive or negative effect on the markets?
The coming employment reports were the most popular topic with 48% of respondents mentioning that. The Ukraine/Russia conflict was also a popular topic again this week, 24% of respondents mentioned this issue.
This week’s unique open-ended topic was on the issue of the Affordable Care Act:
This week the Affordable Care Act reached the critical mark of having 6 million people enrolled. Do you think the program is on track to being successful and achieving its goal of allowing all Americans to have access to affordable health insurance?
There was quite mixed reaction to this question, 30% of respondents did believe the Affordable Care Act is being successful, 60% responded that they thought it is not being successful, while the remaining 10% were either unsure or had mixed opinions on it.
Most people did not elaborate on why they thought it was going well or not, but here are some of the comments…
“I think it is giving many people a chance to get insurance that was harder for them to do before. It is putting restraints on medical providers to reduce the cost of their goods and services. It is setting higher standards for health insurance coverage so it is raising the cost of those whose old policies were sub-standard.”
“success at achieving access for a small heretofore excluded minority, but a disaster for the majority who thought they had reasonable coverage under the old regime.”
What’s your option of the Affordable Care Act so far or the numbers for this week? Continue the discussion in the comments below.
Download the full report to review all the data and comments, click here.