In a first, Millionaire Investor Index falls below Affluent Investor Index. Spectrem Group's Millionaire Investor Index (SMII) hit a new low in April with U.S. millionaires for the first time expressing more pessimism about prospects for their portfolios than their "mass" affluent peers.

The SMII's April decline brings it to -14, down a point from the index's March reading (which was also the SMII's previous all-time low). Spectrem's Affluent Investor Index (SAII) meanwhile rose 7 points in April to -13.

"Millionaires have become more pessimistic about their investments than the broader affluent population for the first time since we began tracking both measures in early 2004," says George Walper, president of Spectrem, a Chicago-based consultancy and market research firm that focuses on the wealth-management and retirement industries. "Continuing a downward trend that began in June [2007], millionaires' optimism eroded once again in April, sinking to a new low as the prospects for a recession continued to weigh heavily.

Month to month

By "affluent" Spectrem means households with $500,000 or more in investable assets. The SAII is the product of 10-minute telephone interviews conducted once a month with 250 heads of affluent households. The SMII -- that's the millionaire investor index -- is based on a subset of the overall "affluent" survey base. The size of its respondent pool varies from month to month but it typically comes from about 100 interviews.

In April, responding to an "open-ended" question about what most affects their investment plans these days, affluent investors ranked stock-market conditions (27%), the economy flow(4%), household income (2%) and job security (1%).

Millionaire respondents to the Spectrem survey expressed slightly more concern about stock market conditions (28%), retirement (7%) and housing and real estate (6%) in April than the affluent.

A recent flurry of high-net-worth consumer- and investor-sentiment reports seems to point in different directions.

Fidelity's 2008 Millionaire Outlook report, based on surveys conducted in January, has high-net-worth investors looking forward to an economic recovery before this year is finished. Phoenix, sifting through a poll of high-net-worth consumers conducted in February and March, suggests that millionaires were taking a considerably grimmer view of things as the winter wore on. -FWR

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