On December 12, 2018 the December 2018 Duke/CFO Global Business Outlook was released. It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions.
In this CFO survey press release, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts – although I don’t necessarily agree with them:
Nearly half (48.6 percent) of U.S. CFOs believe that the nation’s economy will be in recession by the end of 2019, and 82 percent believe that a recession will have begun by the end of 2020.
also:
In 2019, CFOs expect sub-3% growth for the U.S. economy, with accompanying capital spending and employment growth of about 3 percent.
also:
Moreover, their forecasts are skewed to the downside, with a one-in-ten chance that annual real growth will be a meager 0.6 percent. In this worst-case scenario, CFOs would expect their capital spending to fall by 1.3 percent and for hiring to remain flat.
The CFO survey contains two Optimism Index charts, with the bottom chart showing U.S. Optimism (with regard to the economy) at 66, as seen below:
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It should be interesting to see how well the CFOs predict business and economic conditions going forward. I discussed past various aspects of this, and the importance of these predictions, in the July 9, 2010 post titled “The Business Environment”.
(past posts on CEO and CFO surveys can be found under the “CFO and CEO Confidence” label)
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I post various economic forecasts because I believe they should be carefully monitored. However, as those familiar with this site are aware, I do not necessarily agree with many of the consensus estimates and much of the commentary in these forecast surveys.
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The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 2664.75 as this post is written
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