Blue summer: RIAs' take on the economy getting gloomier

Join the club. Advisers are growing increasingly gloomy about the economy, a sentiment that puts them in lock-step with consumers and economists. The Rydex SGI Advisor Confidence Index fell in August to its lowest point since last summer. Advisers are especially grim about the prospects for the economy, according to the survey, which was released Monday. Fear of recession helped push the "current economic outlook" component of the index down 12% from the previous month, Rydex said. The survey captures the sentiments of 150 independent registered investment advisers. Separately today, The Conference Board Inc.'s Consumer Confidence Index plummeted to 44.5 this month, from 59.2 in July. It is now at its lowest level since April 2009. "A contributing factor may have been the debt ceiling discussions, since the decline in confidence was well under way before the [Standard & Poor's] downgrade," Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center Inc., said in a statement. The falling confidence levels among consumers and advisers parallel the increasingly negative view of economists. Economists surveyed by the Associated Press this month put the odds of another recession at 26%, up from 15% in June.