According to the recent TIM (Trade Ideas Monitor) report and the TIM Sentiment Index (TSI), institutional brokers became less bullish over the last five trading days, trending towards neutrality by the end of the week (see previous post or youDevise website for additional information on the TIM report). For the five trading days ending June 18, the number of new long ideas as a percentage of new ideas sent to investment managers declined to 70.92%, compared to 73.66% one week earlier (see last week's post). The intra-week trend was positive. Longs represent 64.92% of all ideas in June.

As for individual securities in the U.S. and North America, the US Natural Gas Fund (UNG) and Endo Pharmaceuticals (ENDP) were the stocks most recommended as longs by institutional brokers, while General Electric (GE), CEMEX (CX), and Palm (PALM) were recommended as shorts.

Once again, the TIM Report appears to be an interesting idea and new source of data. I will continue to monitor it to determine its use for trading - i.e., whether the data is too lagging, or has some leading information, or whether is can be used as a contrarian indicator.

According to the recent TIM (Trade Ideas Monitor) report, over the last five trading days, institutional brokers are continuing to becoming more bearish (see note below, previous post, or the youDevise website for additional information on the TIM report). For the five trading days ending June 4, the number of short ideas as a percentage of new ideas sent to investment managers increased 41.35%, compared to 35.88% just a week ago. The TIM reflects which direction brokers are expecting a stock to move over the next 1-3 weeks. The TIM Long-Short Index, measuring the total number of long ideas compared to the total number of short ideas sent to clients, decreased 35.4%, further highlighting negativity and bearishness from brokers. As for individual securities, Palm (PALM), Freeport McMoran (FCX), and Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR) were the stocks most recommended as shorts by institutional brokers.

Note: The Trade Idea Monitor (TIM) is an application for measuring "ideas from authors (mainly brokers) to recipients (mainly buy-side clients)" (see youDevise website). It is used by institutional brokers to send long and short equity and ETF trade ideas to clients. The TIM Report is based on the number of real-time equity trading ideas sent to over 4,300 equity sales people, sales traders, and analysts at over 300 institutional brokerage firms to more than 100 hedge funds, quant funds, and investment managers.