Bullish sentiment jumped to its highest level since January 13, 2011, in the latest AAII Sentiment Survey.

Investors Intelligence is reporting the highest reading of bullish oriented news writers since May of 2011. Those writing articles with a bullish sentiment now make up 52%, while bearish views are down slightly from prior week at 29%. Many who have been predicting a correction have become bullish, with those in the “corrections camp” now at 19%, the lowest in 4 weeks.

Yesterday, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls (jobs) increased by a significant 243,000 in January. Today’s chart provides some perspective on the US job market. Note how the number of jobs steadily increased from 1961 to 2001 (top chart).

Individual investors boosted their allocations to equities last month according to the January 2012 Asset Allocation Survey.

The recent Case Shiller data showed a continuing decline in home prices in November and now the latest Corelogic data is showing declines in December.  Clearly, the real estate remains …

Another month of PMI data and another month of no recessionary signs.  This month’s report was fairly strong overall except a continuing stagnation in employment.  Headline came in at 54.1, …

Great chart here via Joe Weisenthal. The S&P 500 hasn’t had a -1% day since December. The equity market is beginning to feel like one of those “can’t lose markets”. As the old saying goes, the trend is your friend until it bends.

I know it’s all the rage to be super optimistic about the economy right now, but as one of the few people who cited double dip fears as vastly overblown …

One of Thursday’s stories on CNBC.com had to do with some pros getting out of stocks because sentiment is becoming too bullish. Bullish sentiment can be a sign that an important market top could be lurking just around the corner, so let’s look at one of our sentiment charts to see how bullish things are getting.

After record bear and bull markets in both real estate and gold, the real estate:gold ratio might be telling us that we’ve reached an extreme trough in real estate prices. The ratio hasn’t been this low in over 30 years