- Geopolitics is now the market's number-one concern, a Natixis poll shows.
- The French asset manager published its annual survey of 500 institutional investors Monday.
Geopolitical issues have vaulted past high inflation and a potential recession to become the market's number-one concern, according to a Natixis poll.
The French asset manager published its annual survey of 500 top institutional investors from around the world Monday, having asked each of them what they thought the top economic threats for 2024 were.
Respondents highlighted geopolitical "bad actors" as the issue they're fretting the most about – followed by declining consumer spending, potential central-bank policy errors, and China's faltering economy.
"In an environment marked by geopolitical uncertainty, institutions put bad actors as their top economic threat," Natixis said. "After seeing how the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine drove big price spikes for energy and food in 2022, institutions have good reason for concern as the geopolitical landscape is looking less stable going into 2024."
War placed fifth in Natixis' end-of-2022 poll, trailing inflation, recession, market volatility, and rising interest rates on investors' list of concerns.
But the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv has carried on raging for all of 2023, while the market was confronted with a new geopolitical risk in October when Hamas militants attacked Israel.
In an interview with the UK's the Sunday Times last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the world had become a more "scary and unpredictable" place in 2023.
"These geopolitical matters are very serious – arguably the most serious since 1938," he told the outlet, referring to the year Nazi Germany annexed parts of Czechoslovakia and stepped up its persecution of Jewish people.
As well as highlighting geopolitical fears, Natixis' poll showed that 51% of institutional investors believe a recession is inevitable in 2024, with 74% of that group believing it'll be "painful or very painful".
Three-quarters of the respondents said they thought artificial intelligence would unlock new investment opportunities – but 38% are worried the technology "poses an existential threat to civilization as we know it".