Bears Give Up: Fighting the FED Doesn't Pay

The number of investors with a bearish outlook plunged by more than a third in one week according to a widely followed investor survey released Wednesday, the largest amount of bears to throw in the towel in this poll since 2003.

The survey ending April 5 came as the indomitable Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow Jones Global Indexes: .DJIA) touched its highest intraday point since the two-year bull market began.

Middle East turmoil, an Irish bailout, fears of a municipal bond crisis, a nuclear disaster in Japan and an impending end to the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing has failed to keep the market down this year. And the bears are simply done fighting the tape.

Bears collapsed to just 15.7 percent of those surveyed from a 23.1 percent part of the pie just one week ago, according to the weekly survey of financial newsletter writers by research firm Investors Intelligence. That 32 percent drop is the biggest in a single week since a 37 percent switchover in 2003, according to Bespoke Investment Group's analysis of the II data.

"That action in the face of still ongoing negative news from around the world was certainly impressive and it reinforced the perception that US stocks were still offering value," wrote Mike Burke and John Gray of Investors Intelligence, in the report. "A week ago we noted the speed of the (equity) move from the March lows didn't allow for much reaction from the advisors. However, another week of markets moving higher was clearly enough for many newsletter editors to make a shift."

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