On September 28 the Business Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Survey was released for Q3. The Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey was released on September 15.
Both surveys are well worth looking at, and in general highlight a weakening outlook among executives. In the CEO survey, of particular interest is the CEO Economic Outlook Index, which dropped to 86 from 94.6 in Q2. As stated in the report, “In terms of the overall U.S. economy, member CEOs estimate real GDP will grow by 1.9 percent in 2010 – down significantly from the 2.7 percent increase in the previous survey.”
In the CFO survey, I believe the Optimism Index chart, as seen below, is notable:
It should be interesting to see how well the CEOs and CFOs predict business and economic conditions going forward. I discussed various aspects of this, and the importance of these predictions, in the July 9 post.
A Special Note concerning our economic situation is found here
SPX at 1141.20 as this post is written