The Trade Ideas Monitor (TIM) Sentiment Index (TSI) fell 2.4% week over week, to 49.84 on July 30, 2009 from 51.06 on July 23, 2009, slipping below neutral at 50 into the bearish 40s. However, the index rose 9.3% late week and the three major regional TSIs (North America, UK and Europe excluding UK) increased week over week.

New short ideas as a percentage of all new ideas sent to investment managers in real time through TIM, climbed from 28.26% to 33.19%. Shorts are 36.72% of ideas in July and 40.95% this year. The ideas are given by institutional brokers to their most active hedge fund, quant fund and institutional clients.

Long sector picks by broker sentiment for week-over-week including industrials, financials and consumer staples while the shorts were utilities, energy and information technology. Long stock picks for the US and North America included Biacom, GSI Commerce and Adtran with Cymer, Saks and Priceline Com as the shorts. For the UK market BT Group, BAE Systems and Wolseley were the long picks. Shorts were BG Group, WPP and BP. Europe, excluding the UK, long picks were Natixis, Aegon and Renault with Danone, K+S and ThyssenKrupp as the short picks.

The TSI is based on trading ideas sent by more than 4,300 professionals at 350 institutional brokerage firms to their clients at approximately 150 investment managers around the world. The TSI measures the overall bullish/bearish sentiment of all new and closed ideas sent via TIM on a scale of 1 to 100 (more than 50 = bullish; less than 50 = bearish). It is statistically correlated to movement in stock market index levels 1-3 days forward.