Bullish. That’s fund managers. Or the ones who bothered to participate in BofA’s closely-watched monthly poll anyway.

As a quick aside, when I describe this survey as “closely-watched” (which I do habitually), that’s like me calling a given macro release “hotly-anticipated.” It’s relative. And it’s just boilerplate copy. Words for the sake of them.

BofA’s poll is popular as far as these sorts of surveys go. Just like the monthly jobs report is a dramatic event as far as macro releases go. Every bank and every mainstream financial media outlet has at one time or another endeavored to produce a poll of professional investors and only this one — Michael Hartnett’s — ever really caught on. That doesn’t make it The Eras Tour. It just means it merits mention.

Anyway, the September vintage of Hartnett’s survey counted as the most upbeat since February, which is to say the most bullish since everyone was compelled to ponder the prospect of a tripling, quadrupling and quintupling of the average US tariff rate.

The figure below shows a composite metric from the poll which rolls up cash levels, equity allocations and growth expectations to get a feel for overall sentiment. At 5.4, it rose nearly a full point MoM.

Up sharply though it is from the local (i.e., “Liberation Day”) lows, this month’s reading only counts as “bullish” in the context of 2025. 5.4’s a middling score.

As the chart text notes, that measure ranges from 1-10. 10’s full-on Pollyanna. 1’s my general disposition on life. You don’t wanna be a Pollyanna. But trust me, you don’t wanna be me either. So, 5.4’s probably “about right,” actually, in terms of finding an Aristotelian Golden Mean.

But the rollup masks something like outright bullishness on one of the component metrics: Cash levels, at just 3.9%, are (still) flashing a contrarian “sell” signal (figure on the left, below).

Equity allocations, although not extreme at 28% OW, rose 14ppt MoM. That’s a pretty pronounced jump. As the figure on the right, above, shows, panelists’ allocation to stocks is now slightly above the long-term average, but nowhere near levels seen in and around historical extremes.

Global growth optimism, the third component in the composite metric mentioned above, rose 25ppt over the month. Even that wasn’t enough to push it into positive territory, though.

A net 16% of panelists still expect the global economy to weaken over the next 12 months. Simple math (16% plus 25%) says that figure was a net 41% in August’s poll.

As the chart header notes, that increase — from a net 41% saying growth’s likely to slow to just a net 16% — counted as the largest month-to-month improvement in net growth expectations since October of last year.

Note also that the growth expectations tracker still has a lot of catching up to do with S&P returns (measured YoY). Either that, or stocks have a lot of catching down to do.

“Bulls are feasting on the trade war ending and rate cuts starting,” Hartnett wrote Tuesday. Just 10% of panelists said a hard landing was the most likely macro outcome. Nearly half of respondents expect at least four Fed cuts over the next 12 months.