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RIA Rising

Summer doldrums beset advisors, investors

Barely more than a week into the season, and advisors and investors alike appear to be in a summer rut, judging from attitude surveys released this week.

On Monday, Rydex/SGI said its Advisor Confidence Index on RIA views concerning the American economy nosedived 8.66 percent. It’s the biggest monthly drop in a year, and the fifth straight monthly decline. The index is down 20 percent since January. The latest results were culled from online surveys of 61 RIAs in late May.

The good news: Advisors were more upbeat about the future of the stock market, with the index measuring an improvement of 6.4 percent. One advisor told Rydex/SGI he believed equities are cheap when measured on a price-to-earnings basis.

Today, Spectrem Group released the results from its Affluent Household Outlook, an email survey of 250 households with $500,000 or more in investable assets. The June index was down 11 points from the previous month, the largest decline since January 2008 and its lowest level since last October. (The results had a margin of error of plus/minus 6.2 percentage points.) Millionaire households appeared to be less troubled, judging from a separate Spectrem survey of attitudes in that demographic. It fell just 2 points for the month.

A steady flow of bad economic news—stubbornly high unemployment, a maudlin housing market, sovereign debt issues in Europe and lack of political progress in federal debt negotiations here at home—appears to be weighing on people’s minds.

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