The stock market has been rising.
Yet many investors still don’t trust it.
Questions seem to be everywhere:
- Is artificial intelligence creating another bubble?
- Are stocks too expensive?
- Is the economy strong enough to support today’s prices?
- Are we headed for another major correction?
Those are reasonable questions. What’s interesting is what’s happening beneath the surface: even after a strong market, many investors remain unusually nervous.
History suggests that fear, by itself, may not tell us very much about what comes next.
Investors are still worried
Each week, the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) asks individual investors a simple question:
Do you think stocks will be higher, lower, or about the same six months from now?
For the week ending August 26, 2026:
- 32.9% were bullish
- 22.6% were neutral
- 44.4% were bearish
That means considerably more investors expected stocks to fall than expected them to rise.
The difference between bullish and bearish investors is known as the bull-bear spread. At that point, the spread was about negative 11.5 percentage points, and bearish sentiment had exceeded bullish sentiment for six straight weeks.
So while stock prices remained relatively strong, many investors continued to expect trouble.
Should that worry us?
Maybe. But history gives us another way to look at it.
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright reviewed earlier periods when the AAII bull-bear spread remained negative for six consecutive weeks. Across the prior 27 instances, the S&P 500 produced an average return of approximately 13.6% over the following year.
That does not mean the S&P 500 will gain 13.6% over the next year.
History is not a forecast.
But it reminds us of something important: investor sentiment and investment reality are not always the same thing. People can feel terrible about stocks shortly before markets rise. They can also feel extremely confident shortly before markets fall.
Our emotions are real—but they aren’t particularly reliable forecasting tools.
A strange kind of bull market
What makes today’s market especially interesting is how long some of this skepticism has lasted.
From August 28, 2024 through August 28, 2026, the S&P 500 gained roughly 38%.
Normally, a strong market makes investors more optimistic. That hasn’t happened to the degree we might expect.
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright also examined periods when investors remained bearish on average even though stocks had gained more than 20% during the previous two years. There were only a handful of similar periods.
Following those earlier instances, the S&P 500 averaged gains of approximately 16.2% over the following year and 27% over the following two years.
Again: those numbers describe what happened in the past. They do not tell us what will happen next.
But they raise a useful question:
Could skepticism sometimes be healthier for a bull market than excessive confidence?
Possibly. Markets can become vulnerable when investors begin believing that nothing can go wrong. Today, we seem to have almost the opposite problem: there is no shortage of people looking for reasons the market could fall.
Fear is not an investment strategy
None of this means you should buy stocks simply because other investors are bearish—and it doesn’t mean risks should be ignored.
- Valuations matter.
- Interest rates matter.
- Inflation matters.
- Corporate earnings matter.
- Geopolitical events matter.
Stocks can also fall significantly even when the long-term outlook remains positive.
But there is another risk investors sometimes overlook: allowing fear about what might happen next to interfere with a financial plan designed for the next 10, 20, or 30 years.
That’s where financial planning can become more useful than forecasting.
Start with the plan, not the prediction
At George Wealth Management, we believe an investment decision should begin with a different question:
What is this money supposed to accomplish?
Money you may need next year probably shouldn’t be invested the same way as money intended for retirement 15 or 20 years from now.
A retiree taking regular withdrawals may need a different strategy than an executive still accumulating wealth. A business owner preparing to sell a company may face risks that have little to do with what the S&P 500 does next month.
That’s why we believe investments should fit inside the larger financial plan—not the other way around.
What should investors do now?
Instead of asking whether the market is too high or about to go higher, consider asking:
- Has my financial goal changed?
- Has my time horizon changed?
- Do I have enough cash available for upcoming needs?
- Has market growth made my portfolio more aggressive than I intended?
- Would a significant market decline prevent me from accomplishing an important goal?
- Am I taking risk because my plan requires it—or simply because markets have been rising?
Those questions are usually more useful than trying to predict where the S&P 500 will be three months from now.
For someone approaching or already in retirement, the questions become broader. Investments may need to be coordinated with retirement income, Social Security, taxes, Medicare, spending needs, and estate planning.
And your investment portfolio isn’t the only part of the picture that deserves coordination. Your estate documents, beneficiaries, and legacy goals should work alongside the rest of your plan.
The bottom line
This may be one of the more unusual bull markets we’ve experienced: stocks have risen substantially, yet many investors remain skeptical.
That skepticism may eventually prove justified—or nervous investors could become more confident and put additional money into the market.
We don’t know. And that’s the point.
Successful investing does not require knowing exactly what happens next. It requires knowing what you are trying to accomplish, how much risk you can reasonably take, and whether your investment strategy still supports the life you want.
Markets will change. Headlines will change. Investor sentiment will change.
Your financial decisions should remain connected to something more durable: the future you are trying to create.
Sources: American Association of Individual Investors Sentiment Survey, August 26, 2026; Nasdaq Dorsey Wright, The Most Feared Bull Market?, August 31, 2026.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. Historical market averages are provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as a prediction of future market performance. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index and cannot be invested in directly. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.