Is the whole world bullish?

A couple of weeks ago (see Big tests for stocks), I wrote that while sentiment models were showing crowded long readings, analysts were almost universally urging caution, which was actually bullish: Maybe I am over thinking this: The sentiment picture seems just a little too neatly packaged to me and it would be just a little too easy to be overly bearish here. Positive flows into equity funds after a long winter of negative flows could be interpreted as positively as the return of bullish momentum. Indeed, Schaeffer's Research reported enormous buying of VIX calls last week as a bet on rising volatility (and falling markets), which is contrarian bullish. I heard several talking heads on CNBC late last week cited the same kinds of reasons to be bearish from a sentiment viewpoint. While I understand that sentiment models, on an intermediate to longer term time horizon, can give a bearis...