One day after Bank of America released its latest, and quite bearish Credit Investor Survey, on Tuesday the bank has published its latest, and far broader, Fund Managers Survey which polled a total of 225 panelists with $641bn AUM during the period of November 2-8. According to the survey administrator, BofA CIO Michael Hartnett, there were three key takeaways:
Some more detailed observations together with charts:
On when the market finally tops, investors think the S&P 500 will peak at 3056 (a weighted average of the responses) suggesting 12% upside from today’s level, even though – like the market – this level appears to be rolling over …
…but as BofA notes, 1 in 3 FMS investors (30%) now think US stocks have already peaked, double last month’s reading (16%). This likely also means that there are quite a few who see the S&P rising as high as 3500 or more.
Next, when looking at the big risk cited by credit investors, namely rising rates, Wall Street investors said they don’t expect a rotation from equities to bonds until 3.7% on the 10-year Treasury (also the averaged weighted response); This is about 20bp higher than the response back in April 18.
Contrary to reports of asset liquidations, survey respondents said that their cash level actually fell to 4.7% from 5.1% (just above the avg of the past 10 years of 4.5%) and hovering just above neutral even as investors reportedly stay bearish. To BofA, this means that the Cash Rule has been in “buy” territory for the past nine months. As a reminder, the FMS Cash Rule works as follows: when average cash balance rises above 4.5%, a contrarian buy signal is generated for equities. When the cash balance falls below 3.5%, a contrarian sell signal is generated.
