CFA Institute members are feeling optimistic about the global economy in 2014, according to the Institute’s 2014 Global Market Sentiment Survey released today.
Closer to home, however, most Canadian CFAs aren’t so confident about the country’s economy.
Sixty-three percent of survey respondents said they expect the global economy to grow in 2014, compared with the 40% who felt as optimistic last year. United Kingdom members were the most positive with 78% of participants from that region saying they expect the world economy to grow. Chinese chartered financial analysts (CFA) were the least optimistic with only 48% of members saying they believed the economy would expand next year.
Taking a closer look at the Canadian, members are not quite so optimistic about 2014. According to the survey, only 47% of Canadian CFA holders believe the national economy will grow in 2014, a slight increase over last year’s 45%.
Peter Jarvis, CEO, CFA Society Toronto, believes this pessimism is because of the slow growth the country has seen of late which is causing people to think that the numbers will only continue to disappoint.
“I find it interesting that when [the economy is] very strong the general perception, even of investment managers, is that it will be strong going forward,” he says “and if [the economy is] relatively weak basically the assessment is it will be relatively weak going forward.”
The UK was once again the most upbeat population with 74% of respondents feeling optimistic about their national economy heading into 2014, up from 31% the year before. Japan was a close second with 73% of participants saying they expect their economy to grow next year, a stark increase from the 11% who felt the same in 2013.
Results were gathered from 6,561 online surveys completed by CFA Institute members between October 2 and October 17, 2013. Of those respondents 738 came from Canada. The majority of participants were American with 2,906 surveys completed in the United States.