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This is What Falling off a Cliff Looks Like

The “Affluent Investor Confidence Index” compiled by the Spectrem Group market research and consulting firm dropped 11 points in November, marking its lowest reading in a year and biggest plunge since June 2011.
 
When poll respondents were asked about which news stories were most affecting their economic outlook, nearly half (48%) cited “the political environment,” while nearly one-third (32%) said “the fiscal cliff.” The two are inextricably linked. With the deadline for averting the cliff looming, affluent investors are considering the impact that going over the cliff will have on their portfolios. (In a separate Spectrem Group survey conducted last month, 43% of millionaire investors said they were likely to change their asset allocation should lawmakers fail to find a solution.) 
  
Spectrem’s “Affluent Household Outlook,” a survey of attitudes toward financial factors that impact affluent investors’ daily lives, also took a dramatic turn for the worse in November, falling to its lowest reading since August 2011.

The October-to-November drop-offs in both indexes are either a further indicator of investors’ concerns about the fiscal cliff or, as Spectrem’s analysis amusingly puts it, “perhaps just a case of PETS (Post Election Trauma Syndrome).”

Both drop-offs are depicted in this scary graph. And then, of course, there’s this.

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