Even though the global coronavirus pandemic brought on market downturns as high as a 34% drop in the S&P 500, financial advisors surveyed by Natixis do not expect 2020 to be as bad as 2008.
The 2020 Natixis Global Survey of Financial Professionals found that advisors globally see market returns being in the single digits this year, similar to 2018.
U.S. advisors forecast that the S&P 500 will return -3.6% in 2020 and that there will be a -6.1% return from the MSCI World Index, according to Natixis’ survey. Globally, advisors predict a return of -7% from the S&P 500 and -7.3% from the MSCI World.
To compare, 2008 S&P 500 annual return totaled -37% and MSCI’s slumped to -42.1% A decade later, when the stock market crashed again in late 2018, the S&P 500 returned -4.38% and the MSCI World returned -8.2%.
CoreData Research conducted the survey for Natixis, polling 2,700 advisors managing a collective $136.5 billion in client assets across 16 countries between March and April 2020. Three hundred were U.S. wirehouse advisors and independent broker/dealers managing $28.9 billion in client assets.