This collaboration between NZSA and University of Canterbury (UC) Business School is part of our mission to promote a thriving market and to be the voice of investors. A sentiment index will contribute to the understanding of investor behaviour and the overall market and allow you to get first access to the data and make better-informed investment decisions.
Have your say!
Each week, a random selection of NZSA members are sent an email to complete the survey. If you wish to participate in the NZ Investor Sentiment Index Survey anyway, you can click on this link anytime – also contained in each Briefing newsletter. The sentiment survey is conducted weekly from Thursday 12:01am to Wednesday 11:45pm.
This Week’s Results:
This week’s commentary – November 5th, 2025
New Zealand stock market sentiment
Neutral sentiment of individual investors about the short-term direction of the NZ stock market increased in this week’s survey, bearish decreased, and bulish remained the same.
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, remained at 68.8%.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will essentially stay unchanged over the next six months, increased by 6.3 percentage points to 25.0%.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, decreased by 6.3 percentage points to 6.3%.
New Zealand sector level sentiment
Bullish increases for most sectors, while neutral and bearish decreases for most sectors.
- The level of optimism among individual investors is highest for financials and IT (both at 61.3%), followed by real estate (54.8%). Bullish sentiment is lowest for health care (38.7%), followed by consumer discretionary (41.9%), and energy (48.4%).
- The level of neutral sentiment is highest for health care (51.6%), followed by energy (48.4%) and primary sector (40.6%). Neutral sentiment is lowest for real estate (25.8%), followed by IT and financials (both at 29.0%).
- The level of pessimism is highest for consumer discretionary and real estate (both at 19.4%), followed by industrials (16.7%). Pessimism is lowest for energy (3.2%), followed by primary sector (9.4%) and IT (9.7%).
International sentiment
Bullish and bearish regarding the short-term direction of the Australian market increased. Simultaneously, neutral decreased in this week’s survey. Investor sentiment about the short-term direction of the U.S. market is the opposite except for bearish.
- Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, increased by 1.5 percentage points to 58.6% for Australian stocks and decreased by 14.6 percentage points to 39.3% for U.S. stocks.
- Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay flat over the next six months, decreased by 4.4% percentage points to 24.1% for Australian stocks and increased by 8.5 percentage points to 39.3% for U.S. stocks.
- Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, increased by 3.0 percentage points to 17.2% for Australian stocks and increased by 6.1 percentage points to 21.4% for U.S. stocks.
New Zealand personal investment sentiment
If the investor were to purchase equity, the proportion of investors planning to increase their investment in small and large cap shares, funds decreased compared to last week. Conversely, the proportion of those who planning to increase their investment in nothing, or uncertain about their future investment allocation, increased.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their small cap shares decreased by 6.7 percertage points to 20.0% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their large cap shares decreased by 3.3 percentage points to 16.7% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating an increase in their funds decreased by 6.7 percentage points to 26.7% this week if they were to purchase equity.
- The proportion of investors anticipating no change in their equity allocation increased by 13.3 percentage points to 20.0% this week.
- The proportion of investors who express uncertainty about their equity allocation increased by 3.3 percentage points to 16.7% this week.
Historic Data
There have been wide variations since the survey began (January 2020) in Investor Sentiment. The following chart shows:
- the lowest recorded response for each type of sentiment (the lower ‘whisker’)
- the recorded responses between 25th – 75th percentile (the ‘box’)
- the median response score – ie, exactly 50% of scores are above and below this number
- the maximum response (excluding ‘outliers’)
- Interestingly, NZ Investors have displayed a greater tendency towards expressing “negative” (bearish) sentiment since the survey’s inception.