On March 26, 2025 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:
The economic optimism index fell from 66.0 in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 62.1 in the first quarter of 2025, almost erasing gains from a post-election jump. CFOs’ optimism about their own firm’s financial prospects also dipped, although not nearly as much, according to the survey, which was fielded from Feb. 18 to March 7, 2025.
Almost a third of the 400 responding firms reported concerns about trade policy or tariffs in the first quarter — a sharp increase from the fourth quarter of last year. In addition, “uncertainty” was in the top five respondent concerns.
The CFO Survey contains an Optimism Index chart, with the blue line showing U.S. Optimism (with regard to the economy) at 62.1, 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 5712.15 as this post is written
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