Spectrem Group announced today that its Millionaire Investor Index fell in April to its lowest level since November 2005.

The index’s second-straight decline came as gasoline prices rose sharply across the country. The millionaire index remains mildly bullish at this level, but its back-to-back declines follow a four-month run that began in November 2005 and took the index to within two points of its all-time high.

Along with the millionaire index, the Spectrem Affluent Investor Index also slipped in April, following an identical decline in March. The drop in March dragged the index down into neutral territory, where it remained in April.

“Millionaires continued to lose optimism in the investment environment in April, following a decline the month before that ended a four-month bullish run,” said George Walper Jr., president of Spectrem Group. “The April drop came in a month that saw gasoline prices rise across the country, surpassing US$3 a gallon in some areas. While our open-ended question about investment planning yielded no mention of gasoline prices, it seems clear that a question more focused on news would point to energy costs as a driver of the April decline.”

“With the broader affluent population mirroring millionaires’ falling optimism, whatever forces are at work appear to broad-based and, perhaps, trend-defining,” added Walper Jr.

In response to an open-ended question about the factor most impacting their investment plans, affluent investors in April cited: stock market conditions (14%), the economic environment (8%), retirement (8%), low investment returns (6%), household cash flow (5%), household income (4%), housing and real estate (4%) and job security (1%). When this same question was last asked in January 2006, the top responses were: the economic environment (13%), stock market conditions (12%) and household cash flow (9%).

Millionaires expressed identical concern about stock market conditions in April, with 14% also citing it as the No. 1 factor impacting their investment plans. Next for millionaires were: the economic environment (10%) and low investment returns (10%).

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 US$500,000 or more in investable assets. The Millionaire Investor Index is based on a subset of the overall survey group that can vary each month.