Confidence among affluent investors fell in January after a strong bounce in December.
Spectrem Group said Wednesday that its Affluent Investor Index fell to a neutral reading of 8 last month, reversing course after a return to mildly bullish territory in December.
January's decline brought the index to the neutral area where it had been in five of the final six months of 2004.
The Spectrem Affluent Investor Index, which measures the investment outlook in households with $500,000 or more of investable assets, had jumped to 13 in December from 5 in November, 4 in October, and single-digit readings back to an 8 in July.
The Spectrem Millionaire Index stood unchanged at 20 in January, its fourth straight month at a mildly bullish level.
The 12-point divergence between the two indexes last month was the largest since their February 2004 start-up. Millionaires have consistently been more bullish than the overall affluent population.
