Investors Expect Market to Rally within Year

August 28, 2001 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The majority of investors feel optimistic about the market, with 65% of respondents in a survey expecting the market to rally within a year.

The survey, by Datek Online Financial Services, revealed that 15% of the sample expect an uptick within six months while a further 50% indicated they believe the rally will begin sometime between six and 12 months.

Female investors were found to be less optimistic about a stock market recovery than their male counterparts, with 36% expecting at least a year before the recovery begins, compared to 32% of males.

That more pessimistic outlook showed up in their stock-picking strategies, according to survey results, with women more likely to pick defensive stocks than men.

When asked to name three market sectors expected to produce the best returns over the next six months, 31% of the time women listed:

  • non-cyclical consumer products
  • health care
  • utilities.

In contrast, these sectors were named in 23% of the male responses.

Health care, the top choice of the female respondents, was named in 24% of the responses as the single sector most likely to produce the best returns over the period.

In contrast, men divided their top choice between technology, accounting for 19% of their responses, and health care, accounting for 18% of their responses.

The female respondents were also less likely than the males to execute trades during the last year, although a greater percentage of women reduced their technology holdings over the period.

The women also said they did not change their trading pattern as much as the male respondents, who said they decreased their trading activity over the last year.


 

«