Finance & Business / Background
CFO averages conceal a financing divide
Liz Ann Sonders revisited the third-quarter CFO Survey on October 6. Duke University and the Richmond and Atlanta Feds surveyed 517 financial executives August 17–September 4 and released results September 23. Larger firms’ improving optimism offset declines among smaller and financially constrained firms.
Economy optimism eased from 60.6 to 60.3; own-firm optimism fell from 70.7 to 69.7, on a 0–100 scale. About 20% of small firms and 10% of large firms reported financing constraints on costs or opportunities. A small average change therefore masks differing conditions.
Expected 2026 selling-price growth rose from 4.7% to 5.3%. That forecast is sales-weighted and winsorized; optimism uses unweighted averages. Forecasts are not realized inflation, and this is an older survey. It offers context for September ISM readings, without establishing a causal link between different samples and periods.
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