The CFO Survey First Quarter 2024 – Notable Excerpts

On March 27, 2024 The CFO Survey was released.  It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions.

In the CFO Survey press release, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts – although I don’t necessarily agree with them:

CFOs revised upward their expectations for real GDP growth over the next four quarters to 2.2 percent, from 1.7 percent in the prior survey and 1.4 percent a year ago. Moreover, the probability respondents assign to negative year-ahead economic growth fell to 10 percent, from 31 percent during the second half of 2022.

Alongside stronger GDP growth expectations, using a scale from 0 to 100 to rate their optimism about the overall U.S. economy, CFO optimism increased to 61, its highest level since 2021Q2. The pick-up in overall optimism is widespread, cutting across firm size and industry.

also:

CFO optimism about their own firm’s financial prospects, which stands at a level of 69, increased slightly from last quarter. At the same time, over half of firms expect their price growth in 2024 to remain above pre-COVID norms, suggesting that for many firms, pricing pressures remain above what they consider normal.

The CFO Survey contains an Optimism Index chart, with the blue line showing U.S. Optimism (with regard to the economy) at 60.6, as seen below:

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t 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 5217.37 as this post is written