Record-high 48 percent expect stock market decline: Gallup

A record 48 percent of Americans in a new poll expect the stock market to fall in the first half of this year amid concerns about inflation and recession.

Just 18 percent think the market will stay the same in the next six months, and 31 percent think it will go up, according to Gallup.

Most Americans — 67 percent — think inflation will rise in the next six months, though the figure is down from a record 79 percent who said the same at the start of last year.

Republicans were more pessimistic than Democrats on inflation, the stock market and unemployment.

More than three-quarters of Republicans polled — 78 percent — expect inflation will go up, compared to 55 percent of Democrats.

Fifty-seven percent of Republican respondents think the stock market will fall, while just 38 percent of Democrats think the same.

Gallup polled 1,011 U.S. adults from Jan. 2-22, and the results had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In April 2008, just before a major stock market decline ahead of a recession, Gallup found that 62 percent of Americans thought it was “a bad time to invest in the stock market.”

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