The State Street Investor Confidence Index fell 3.9 points in November to a reading of 89.2.
The index, released by State Street Global Markets, shows that the quick U.S. pre-election run-up in confidence at the end of October and early November has subsided, and the index has dropped slightly through the end of the month. The index nevertheless shows a small amount of net buying of risky assets by global investors and remains above its September 2004 level of 84.7, a relatively low level at which the index had approximately hovered since June.
Developed by Harvard University professor Ken Froot and Paul O’Connell of State Street Associates, the index seeks to offer a quantitative measure tracking the common buying patterns of institutional investors around the world. “As we drill down into the regional variances of the index, we see that investors from Europe appear highly concerned by developments in the Euro and U.S. dollar and are overall selling risky assets in relation to their portfolio holdings,” said O’Connell. “By contrast, Asian investors are more buoyed by regional growth prospects. They are displaying stronger confidence and systematic buying across their portfolios, more so currently than investors in other regions. Investors in the U.S. are in between, though they continue to add to the risk of their portfolios in a relatively light manner.”