Global Investing

What will happen first? A U.S. credit rating downgrade or the country’s unemployment falling below 7 percent?

Or Spain having no other option but to ask for a bailout?

Bank of America Merrill Lynch asked investors in its monthly fund manager survey what “surprises”  they saw coming up first this year.

And the result is: bad news will come first.

A U.S. debt downgrade got the top spot, with more than 35 percent of investors seeing that happen first, with crisis-hit Spain having to ask for more help a close second, at just over 30 percent.

The United States will have to wait a bit longer to cut its unemployment below 7 percent, with only about 12 percent seeing that happening first. Only 10 percent bet on Japan weakening its currency to 100 yen to the dollar and very few chose gold hitting $2,000 an ounce.

For the bank, it shows pessimism is still alive and kicking despite investors’ more positive view on the global economic outlook. It said in the report:

Yet another guardian of market orthodoxy has uttered what was once an unspeakable heresy.

This week, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's (EBRD) acknowledged that its old approach of encouraging growth in client economies by reducing the role of the state and fostering private ownership was "simplistic".

"The problem with this view is that markets cannot function properly unless there are well-run, effective public institutions in place," the London-based development bank said in its annual transition report.

The growing acrimony in the international debate over China's currency policy has led some to warn that Beijing could dig in its heels if pushed to hard to let its yuan rise.

But Barclays Capital says Beijing could let its currency strengthen as early as next month, notwithstanding its public resolve against Washington's threat to label it as a currency manipulator.

"They do have a 'If you stop pushing, we'll do it' attitude, which is kind of childish, really. But it will happen because they are the only country in the world, besides India, where there is a whiff of inflation," says Barclays' asset allocation head Tim Bond.