Recession risk has declined and the economy's current expansion period will last at least a year longer than was forecast before the U.S. election, according to a new Deutsche Bank analysis of a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York .
The results of the primary dealer survey, which polls banks and securities brokers on their economic, monetary policy and financial market expectations in advance of Federal Reserve meetings, showed that primary dealers (a list that includes firms like Bank of America, Citigroup, Barclays, Nomura Securities and RBC Capital Markets) forecast an increase in the number of months before the federal funds rate returned to 0 percent.
Deutsche Bank's chief international economist, Torsten Slok, concluded this showed the election of Donald Trump effectively reduced recession risk in the near term and extended the economy's expansion period.
The Fed's targeted short-term rate returning to 0 percent would imply a recession, as interest rates are reduced by central banks in times of economic weakness to provide a boost to the economy.
Seven months before the U.S. election the expectation was that the economy would experience a recession within 11 months; the current expectation from market participants is 27, according to Slok's analysis of the survey.
"So using those numbers we made some very simple assumptions and came to the conclusion that the market at the moment sees that we are at least two years away from the next recession, and this is very important because before the election with Donald Trump, the market was saying that we were about a year away, and the fact that we have pushed that out so much is certainly a very strong indicator that we are away from a recession quite a bit here," Slok said Friday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
The bullish sentiments from Wall Street dealers come as the market appeared to react negatively Monday morning after a deluge of weekend news about President Trump's executive order to impose an immigration ban. In morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average, Nasdaq and experienced their biggest drops in months.
Yet to Slok, the optimism about the economy also implies that the market's gains since Trump's election could continue.
Slok said a number of his inflation outlook models "continue to suggest that inflation is well-contained and the Fed does still have things under control, so that's why the dovish Fed, if you will, or the two, three hikes this year continue to be a bull scenario for equities."
