Affluent Bullishness

After a dry spout of positive marketsentiment among America's wealthy,they're starting to look up. Chicagoinvestment firm Spectrem Group's(www.spectrem.com) Spectrem AffluentIndex, which gauges the investmentoutlook of US households with morethan $500,000 to invest, and SpectremMillionaire Index, which measures thosewith more than $1 million, both took asharp upturn in December 2004. TheAffluent Index more than doubled itsscore, leaping from a 5-month run of neutralratings into a mildly bullish zone. Theindex sunk a bit in January, but reenteredbullish territory in February. In responseto what drives their economic outlook,affluent investors recently cited the war inIraq (20%), Social Security (12%), thedeficit (8%), increasing oil and gas prices(6%), and interest rate increases (4%) astheir top concerns. Interestingly, SocialSecurity was at the bottom of the list ofimportant economic factors last year.