Spectrem Group announced today that its Spectrem Millionaire Investor Index and Spectrem Affluent Investor Index moved in opposite directions in May, the first time the two indices have done so since March 2004.

The millionaire index posted a small gain in May, reversing the index’s consecutive declines in March and April. The index’s May performance kept millionaires mildly bullish for a seventh-straight month, it said.

In contrast, affluent investors continued to lose optimism in May. The affluent index, which measures the investment outlook of households with $500,000 or more in ingestible assets, fell. It registered another neutral reading and is at the index’s lowest point since its all-time low of October 2005.

Affluent investors have been neutral for 10 of the past 12 months, and the May decline followed losses in both March and April, Spectrem noted. The last time the two indexes moved in opposite directions, in March 2004, it was the millionaire index that gained, while the affluent index lost.

“Despite rising concern over oil and gas prices, millionaires stemmed a two-month erosion in optimism in May. Yet, the broader affluent index continued to fall,” commented George Walper Jr., president of Spectrem Group. “This divergence suggests it might be a good time to pay some extra attention to the indexes’ performance. The prior opposite moves in March 2004 coincided with an all-time high for the millionaire index and a first decline from the affluent index’s record high of February 2004.”

In response to an open-ended question about the news event having the greatest impact on their economic outlook, affluent investors cited: oil and gas prices (23%), the Iraq War (13%), interest rates (8%), immigration (6%), the economy (4%) and the deficit (2%). The percentage choosing oil and gas prices rose sharply from 14% in February 2006, the last time this question was asked.

Like the affluent, millionaires also expressed the greatest concern about oil and gas prices at 22%, followed by the Iraq War (14%), interest rates (9%), the economy (7%) and immigration (3%).

The Spectrem Affluent Investor Index is based on 250, 10-minute telephone interviews each month, giving the data a margin of error of plus or minus 6.2 percentage points. Interviews are conducted with the financial decision-makers in households with $500,000 or more in investable assets. The Spectrem Millionaire Investor Index is based on a subset of the overall survey group that can vary each month.