Millionaire investors in the U.S. have the most pessimistic view of the stock market next year since the 2008 global financial crisis, a report showed.
According to CNBC on the 19th (local time), an online “millionaire survey” of 761 Americans with investment assets of more than $1 million last month showed that 56% of respondents predicted that the Standard & Poor’s 500 index would fall by 10% next year.
CNBC reported that nearly a third of the respondents expected the S&P 500 index to fall more than 15% next year.
This means that many investors are concerned that the S&P 500 index, which has already plunged 18% this year, could fall further to almost the same extent in 2023.
“This is the most pessimistic result of a survey of millionaire investors since the 2008 and 2009 financial crises,” said George Walper, president of Spectre Group, which conducted the survey.
When asked what is the biggest threat in personal assets, the largest number of respondents (28%) answered “the stock market,” indicating that they are most concerned about the fall in stock prices.
Given that millionaire investors own more than 85% of all privately held stocks, their pessimistic views are expected to put pressure on the stock market.
Amid rising market uncertainties due to inflation, interest rate hikes and possible economic recession, wealthy people seem to hold cash and wait and see the situation.
Nearly half (46%) of millionaire investors surveyed said they had increased the portion of cash in their portfolios compared to last year, 17% of whom said they had “increased the portion of cash very much.”
At the end of next year, 60% of the respondents expected the economy to be “weak” or “much weaker” than it is now.
However, the broadcast said that millionaire investors’ views on the market outlook differed greatly from generation to generation.
81% of Millennial respondents were confident that their assets would increase by the end of next year, while 46% expected their assets to increase by more than 10%. More than half of millennial respondents predicted that the S&P 500 index would rebound by more than 10% next year.
However, 61% of baby boomers expected their assets to be smaller next year than they are now.
In response, Walper analyzed that millennials, who grew up in the era of low-interest rates and rising asset prices, were familiar with the pattern of a rapid rebound after the stock price fell, while the elderly remembered inflation in the 1970s and 1980s and more than a decade of decline.
On the same day, the New York Stock Exchange continued to decline, with the S&P 500 index falling 0.90% and the tech-laden Nasdaq index falling 1.49%, respectively, due to rising concerns over the economic recession next year.