Gallup: Majority of U.S. investors no longer expect quick rebound

April 9 (UPI) -- A new survey shows a majority of U.S. investors no longer expect the quick rebound in the stock market after the coronavirus pandemic they did last month, Gallup said Thursday.

In mid-March, 55 percent of U.S. investors said the stock market would bounce back quickly once the coronavirus crisis ended and 45 percent said it would take a long time. Now, those figures are reversed, a new survey shows, with 55 percent saying it will take a long time and 45 percent saying it will be quick.

U.S. investors were defined as those with $10,000 or more invested in stocks or bonds, Gallup said.

Fifty-five percent of investors said in the new survey conducted in early April that they would hold onto their stocks and wait for the market to come back. Slightly fewer, 52 percent, said last month it was time to hold onto stocks.

Investors who said it was a good opportunity to purchase stocks while prices were down slipped 5 from 34 percent to 29 percent. And the percentage who said it was time to decrease their stock holdings to protect from further losses was still small at 6 percent, up only 2 percentage points, from 4 percent last month.

Still, most investors were at least somewhat confident they could weather the storm. More than eight in 10 said they could handle the current market downtown, with 39 percent being very confident and 46 percent being somewhat confident.

The survey is an update of the Wells Fargo/Gallup survey on investors from March 17-19.

"At that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closings were hovering around 20,000, down nearly 30 percent from the Dow's high point a month earlier," senior Gallup editor Lydia Saad noted. "Since then, the Dow fell further to below 18,000 before building back up to just over 21,000 at the time of the last survey."

Findings were based on a random sample of 2,691 U.S. adults polled April 3-5, with a 4 percentage point margin of error.