Institutional brokers became even more positive about stocks over the last five trading days, according to Trade Ideas Monitor (TIM).

Through the five trading days ended April 30, the FTSE increased 5.6% and the S&P by 2.5%. Long ideas as a percentage of all new ideas sent to investment managers in real time through TIM, increased to 67.75% compared with 61.05% on April 23. To date longs represent 56.67% of ideas in April and 56.63% so far in 2009.

The TIM Long-Short Index measures the total number of long ideas compared to the total number of short ideas sent to clients, increased 34% to 2.10 from 1.57 on April 23. This is a positive sign. The higher the index, the more bullish the brokers.

In the US and North America the main long sectors were Taiwan, industrial machinery and health care equipment. The most poplar short sectors were IT consulting and other services, construction and engineering, construction and farm machinery.

In the UK, Europe and Asia the most long sectors included steel, fertilizers and agricultural chemicals and automobile manufacturers while the most popular short sectors were diversified banks, construction and farm machinery and food retail.

The report is based on the number of equity trading ideas sent in real time by more than 4,300 equity sales people, sales traders and research analysts at over 300 institutional brokerage companies to more than 100 hedge funds, quant funds and more traditional investment managers.