Somehow, Michael Hartnett found more than 200 fund managers to poll during the second week of August, when people who allocate capital for a living are generally baking themselves on 105° next to bodies of teal water.

Respondents to the August installment of BofA’s ever-popular monthly survey were unabashedly — almost unequivocally — bullish.

For example, self-reported cash allocations slipped from an already paltry 3.6% in July to what Hartnett described as an “uber-low” of 3.5% of AUM in August, as shown on the left, below.

The figure on the right gives you some historical context for this month’s 56% Overweight in global equities.

August’s cash levels are among the lowest in survey history. The series goes back nearly three decades. 4%, you’re reminded, is the contrarian “sell” threshold.

As for equity allocations, August’s 56% Overweight is the highest since November of 2021, which is to say since that year’s “stimmy”-fueled bonanza crescendoed in a gamma squeeze for Tesla and Bitcoin put in a local high. (Jerome Powell jettisoned the “transitory” characterization for inflation the very next month. The rest, as they say, is history.)

On the survey’s broadest measure of overall sentiment — which rolls up cash allocations, equity allocations and growth expectations — the August survey was among the five most bullish ever.

The figure above shows you the breakdown of responses to the “landing” question, which some readers understandably view as anachronistic by now. For the second consecutive month, “no landing” garnered a record share of the vote.

Nearly three quarters of respondents don’t see a Fed hike before the midterms and more than half said Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole address next week will be “neutral” in tone.

Hartnett summed things up. “Consensus conviction is no macro landing, no Fed hike, no AI capex cut, no Democratic sweep, no bears,” he wrote. “Positioning continues to recommend investors retreat or rotate within risk assets rather than reload.”