In a new survey of financial advisors released Monday by SS&C Technologies Holdings, a financial services provider, three-quarters of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned about inflation. One-fifth purported not to be at all concerned.
The survey focused on fixed income investing, economic confidence and market performance.
Forty-four percent of advisors said their confidence in the economy was at about the same level as it was at the same time in 2017, while 38% said they were less confident.
"The survey's results show an interesting dichotomy in that the vast majority of financial advisors expressed concern about the specter of inflation dogging 2019, yet those same respondents' confidence in the broad economy remains on par with where it was at this time last year," Gibson Smith, founder and chief investment officer of Smith Capital Investors, said in a statement.
"If fixed income allocations can be considered a bellwether for overall portfolio reallocations, then our consensus is advisors are taking a wait-and-see approach to the coming year before making any meaningful modifications to how they think about their clients' overall market exposure."
ALPS Advisors, a division of SS&C Technologies, and Smith Capital Investors conducted the online survey in late October and early November of 313 financial advisors at independent broker-dealers, banks, wirehouses and in sole practice as RIAs.
Asked whether the U.S. Federal Reserve had moved too quickly or aggressively on interest rate hikes, 64% of advisors said it had not, while 31% said it had — indicating support of the pace of the Fed's rate hikes, according to the statement.
