"AAII.com publishes their sentiment survey weekly online ... the highest bearish reading of the last 12 months"

CNN's sentiment indicator says the opposite, is at a very high bullish reading, topped only in Jan/Feb/Oct as you can see if you click on "Timeline":

edition.cnn.com - Fear and greed

Whatever you look for, on the Internet you'll find it...


Yeah, I was surprised to see AAII's sentiment survey not showing a more bullish take from their participants. It's just one signal among many, but I think it's a somewhat useful indicator, as it's been published for many years, the history is there to see, and it's updated weekly.

The CNN Fear/Greed index hardly shows a blow-off top occurring at the moment either. It's moderately high, but not pushing into extreme greed, and it's been significantly higher many times in the last year. Here's a little longer chart of the Fear/Greed index: en.macromicro.me - Cnn fear and greed

I'll also note that the Conference Board survey shown in the Axios article, with it's all-time high optimism about stock prices for the coming year, was showing results from the October survey, before the Trump win fueled the market rally. Results for sentiment the week of November 13th from AAII reflect that burst of optimism: 49.8% bullish, only 28.3% bearish.