If peak optimism’s a contrarian indicator, watch out.
As regular readers will attest, I’ve long steered clear of the sort of hyperbolic, “bells at the top” financial agitprop that sells tabloids. But that doesn’t mean I can’t (or won’t) call it like I see it, or otherwise point out what’s glaringly obvious.
With that in mind, note that headed into 2026, professional money managers have all but “priced out” (with the scare quotes to denote that in this case I’m not referring to market positioning but rather survey responses) a hard landing for the global economy.
There’s the chart. It’s derived, of course, from BofA’s monthly fund manager poll. In the December vintage, “hard landing” took just 3% of the vote, the least since the bank started asking the question.
The peak for subjective hard landing “odds” was “Liberation Day,” at 49%. (Thanks “Tariff Man.”)
It’s, um, interesting that fund managers would perceive the lowest risk of a recession at a time when the US labor market’s the weakest in five years and global rate cuts are set to ~halve in 2026 from 2025.
The figure above, which shows BofA’s broadest survey metric of professional investor sentiment, suggests the pros have rarely been more upbeat.
That measure rolls up cash levels (lower is bullish), equity allocations and global growth expectations. At 7.4, it’s the highest since the month before the botched Kabul withdrawal tanked Joe Biden’s approval rating irretrievably.
As BofA’s Michael Hartnett noted, current levels of fund manager optimism have only been witnessed five other times since the dot-com bubble burst. One of those episodes was the period leading into the subprime collapse which, for anyone under 30 who might need a reminder, presaged the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
I’m going to indulge in the worst of all cheap article closers (father forgive me, for I have sinned): What could go wrong?
Whenever I risk a comment here about the future, fate always shows me to be a fool. But I’m not letting that discourage me. When I think about probable/possible events in the near term, I come up with 1) Supreme Court ruling anything that can be construed as positive with respect to tariffs. 2) Increasing resistance to Trump and his backward economic policies, resulting in an unraveling of the same, and 3) New Fed policy of “pedal to the metal” under a Trump puppet. As for a hard landing, I really believed in the Wharton economic study that predicted we would be in a recession by now. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/4/10/economic-effects-of-president-trumps-tariffs#:~:text=Revenue%20Impact:%20President%20Trump's%20tariff,treated%20as%20neutral%20(Ricardian). So far, none of the scholarly predictions about the end of the world have come to pass. That doesn’t mean that they won’t, but there is at least a long lag, which might coincide with the Fed juice.
4) Karma Southern Style – Nixon and Kissinger’s “make the economy scream” regime change ploy is visited on the US Gulf Coast refinery complex by an aggrieved SA country’s drone attack (or maybe the CIA) taking out 55% of our oil refining capacity.
Another closer to the article might be: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
What goes wrong is when the masses realize ‘the greatest’ country can’t deliver on the promised basics like clean water and air, healthy food, public safety, quality infrastructure, the best healthcare and education, and the rule of law. If we don’t have that we are not the greatest. Encouragingly there are cracks showing. How many more federal buildings have to be defaced before it’s enough.
i will put one out there , a political vacuum when a certain 80 year old’s number comes up , about 5% according to the actuarial bingo cards.
That number is higher by physical appearance…lower by the army of doctors keeping him zombiefied (sorry – FIT LIKE NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN FIT BEFORE!)
We haven’t hit the predicted economic collapse yet. I don’t think it will happen next week or next month. I do believe that BRICS will be our undoing.The numbers of US trade vs BRICS obviously favors the US currently. But now that it is clear that the only objective of the Trump administration is to maximize the bribes, not to negotiate serious trade deals. In Trumps warped mind he still thinks we dominate trade like we did after world war 2. Currently BRICS represents 40% of world wide GDP. When that reaches 60% I do believe that will finally cause the US collapse and then China will take the number one spot without firing one bullet.