Financial adviser sentiment cleaving to liferaft

The degree to which Australian financial planners are looking for more optimistic signals amid the current torrent of bad news has been revealed in new research released by Wealth Insights.

The Wealth Insights Planner Sentiment Index for December revealed sentiment plumbing levels not seen since the global financial crisis, but the surveying process also revealed the degree to which financial advisers seem to be looking for better news.

Wealth Insights managing director Vanessa McMahon said that amid last week's more positive news around European Central Bank intervention and the consequent improvement in share markets, financial adviser sentiment had improved markedly.

"Financial adviser sentiment is generally still lower than when we last conducted our survey in October, but the result for December is markedly better than it might have been - largely because of the more positive news around central bank intervention and the impact on share markets," she said.

The Wealth Insights research has consistently revealed a close correlation between Australian financial adviser sentiment and the fortunes of the Australian Securities Exchange, and McMahon said this had been strikingly confirmed by the spike recorded mid-way through the December survey process.

This was something that had been evidenced by the significantly different responses from survey respondents between Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and then Thursday and Friday.

Asked whether times were good or bad right now, the survey revealed a 20 per cent spike towards positivity on the latter two days, and after the more positive news on ECB action.

Despite this spike in positivity, McMahon pointed out that the overall financial planner sentiment remained at levels not seen since the depths of the global financial crisis in late 2008.

She said that, in short, Australian financial planners were closing out 2011 feeling generally pessimistic about the immediate outlook.