Institutional brokers have become bullish again about equities following the decline of equity markets over the last five trading days, according to Trade Ideas Monitor (TIM).

Through the five trading days ended May 21, the FTSE decreased 0.4% and the S&P by 0.5%. Long ideas over as a percentage of all new ideas sent to investment managers in real time through the TIM, increased to 65.20% compared with 59.39% on May 14. To date, longs represent 61.24% of ideas in May and 57.03% in 2009.

The TIM Long-Short Index, which measures the total number of long ideas compared with the total number of short ideas sent to clients, increased 28% to 1.87 from 1.46 on May 14. This is a positive sign. The higher the index, the more bullish the brokers. At 1.5, brokers are entering two longs for every short.

In the US and North America the most long sectors included apparel, accessories and luxury goods, food retail and car manufacturers. The most short sectors were aerospace and defence, systems software and regional banks.

In the UK, Europe and Asia the most long sectors included pharmaceuticals, steel and healthcare technology while the most short sectors were integrated telecommunication services, oil and gas refining and marketing and water utilities.

TIM is used by more than 4,300 equity sales people, sales traders and research analysts at institutional brokerage companies worldwide to send trading ideas on over 13,000 stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs) to their clients.

Ideas entered into the TIM reflect which direction brokers believe a stock's price will move over the next 1-3 weeks, on average.

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