“What Is The Biggest Risk For 2025” And 13 Other Highlights From DB’s 2025 Market Survey

The Deutche Bank 2025 global financial market survey had 471 responses from around the world, and was conducted between the 10th and 13th of December 2024. Here are the 14 main highlights:

1. Only 2% believe US growth will be below 1% in 2025, whereas that’s the average expected for Europe. The average expected for the US in 2.5%, no respondents think Europe will be at or above this level.

2. A global trade war is seen as the biggest observable risk for 2025, followed by a tech stock plunge and concerns over inflation and bond yields

3. Investors think Trump means business on tariffs but an average score of 5 means that they don’t think he’ll be as aggressive as the campaign pledges. Only 6.4% think he’ll be more extreme (8 and above)

4. The overwhelming majority (90%) believe the German debt brake will be reformed. However, only 12% believe the change will be significant.

5. German respondents were much more confident that there will be reform of some description, with only 2% thinking the debt brake will remain in its current form.

6. DB asked this question 3 times in both 2021 and 2024. Less think there’s a US tech bubble in 2024 than in 2021 but the overall number is still high. There’s been no real increase in the bubble score for the Mag-7 through 2024, even with a 72.5% climb YTD. Bitcoin sees the highest bubble risk and European equities are seen furthest away from this…

7. For the Mag-7 in 2025 while 33% believe they’ll decline and 22% think by more than 10%, 67% think they’ll be higher with an average overall gain of 6.8% expected, albeit down from the 12.9% expected in 2024

8. YE 2025 Treasury yield expectations (average 4.2%) are a bit lower than current levels with only 4% believing we’ll end 2025 >5%

9. Germany yields are seen steady in 2025 on average but with 50% expecting 10yr yields to end the year less than 2%

10. The S&P is expected to be +5.2% higher in 2025, with 23% believing it will be lower and 23% believing up >10%. The overwhelming consensus (35%) think between 5% to 10% and much more concentrated than in prior years.

11. Bitcoin and Nvidia are seen as more likely to halve than double, especially Bitcoin. However, 24% and 28%, respectively, believe they’ll double. We first asked in 2021, and both have doubled since but did halve into 2022 first

12. AI is increasingly infiltrating the office, but extensive use hasn’t increased in the last 5 months…

13. The US and Europe are clearly diverging in expected inflation, with US picking up again through 2024 but European expectations sharply lower since the summer and below 2% for the first time since Q4 2021.

14. Home Alone is your favorite Xmas movie. Let’s hope your house doesn’t end up the same as that one did this Xmas and that Die Hard isn’t your Xmas template either.