• Chief financial officers are relatively optimistic on the economic outlook, seeing no recession or bear market in the cards for next year, but their view of Trump’s handling of the job of president in the first year of his second term is lukewarm at best, according to the Q4 2025 CNBC CFO Council Survey.
• Chief financial officers expect rate cuts to come at a measured pace, at most two in the first half of 2026, and many expect inflation to remain above the Fed’s target of 2% into 2027.
• CFOs do not expect Trump’s hand-picked Fed chair replacement to be any more effective at guiding the central bank’s mission than Jerome Powell, according to the survey results.

Over half of CFOs (59%) say there will not be a recession next year, and 73% of CFOs described themselves as optimistic on the economic outlook. Few CFOs, just two, predict a stock market correction of at least 10%, and no CFO sees a bear market ahead. But most CFOs do think stocks will be stuck in a trading range short of a new record high milestone for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, with the index unable to break out above 50,000 in the foreseeable future, a reasonably cautious view after a double-digit gain year-to-date for stocks (16% in the case of the S&P 500).