Concerns over global recession jumped to the top of the worry list for investors in corporate bonds as market stress in late 2018 and expectations for further weakness in economic data dent investor confidence, a new poll shows.
Almost a third of credit investors surveyed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch see the risk of a global recession as their top worry, the highest for a single concern since mid 2017.
The results of the survey of 58 BofA clients come on the back of a slew of weak economic data, with Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, only narrowly avoiding a technical recession in the second half of last year. At the same time, growth in China slowed in 2018 to a 28 year low. Next week’s release of fourth-quarter gross domestic product data in the US is expected to show a sharp drop in growth from the highs in the second quarter.