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December 17, 2018 at 04:16 PM
Sixty-one percent of U.S. investors in a survey released Monday by Wells Fargo said the Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates further, up from 46% of investors surveyed in May.
Forty-eight percent of respondents in the fourth-quarter Wells Fargo investor and retirement optimism index survey said raising rates would be bad for the economy, compared with 16% who said rate hikes would be beneficial. Thirty-seven percent said higher rates would not make much of a difference for the economy.
Nearly half of surveyed investors reported that their income had not kept up with the rate of inflation over the past four years.
The Wells Fargo Investment Institute said it expected a rate hike at the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meeting that concludes on Dec. 19. ”Our current outlook is for three additional rate hikes over next year before the Fed ends its current rate hike cycle,” Brian Rehling, the institute’s co-head of global fixed income strategy, said in a statement.
Fifty-three percent of investors expressed faith in the Fed’s decision-making on interest rates, while 47% said they had little or no trust.
The fourth-quarter index survey was conducted by Gallup Panel in mid-November among 1,022 U.S. adults with $10,000 or more invested in stocks, bonds or mutual funds. The sample comprised 67% non-retirees and 33% retirees. Of total respondents, 39% reported annual incomes of less than $90,000; 61% reported $90,000 or more.
The survey results showed that half of investors in the fourth-quarter poll considered the current U.S. economy solid, while 11% described it as “booming.” However, a significant 39% used the adjectives “shaky” or “weak.”
Separately, the poll found that 40% of respondents perceived the economy about as strong as it has been reported to be, and 23% felt it was stronger. Thirty-seven percent said it was not as strong as reported.
The institute said it did not foresee a recession next year, but noted that risks increase beyond 2019.
Wells Fargo’s investor and retirement optimism index, a consumer-based barometer of how investors view the investing climate, did not move in the fourth quarter, coming in at 98, the same level as in the third quarter. The index has an adjusted baseline score of 100 from when it was established in October 1996. It peaked at +152 in January 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, and hit a low of -81 in February 2009.
Wells Fargo said the index has hovered near 100 for most of the past two years, following a 16-year period when it was consistently below that level.
Along with results of the index survey, Wells Fargo published its 2019 outlook, “The End of Easy.”
