Video: Global Insight With Fidelity's Marty Dropkin

The annual survey - which incorporates the views of the group's 165 in-house investment analysts built on some 16,000 individual company meetings they conduct with corporate decision-makers each year - found corporate sentiment had suffered its sharpest drop since the survey's inception in 2011, falling from 1.6 in 2018 to 0.6.

In the above video, after explaining how the survey is conducted, Dropkin discusses what that fall actually means, noting: "After two years of increasing global sentiment, we saw a fairly sharp drop-off this year.

"The global sentiment indicator offers a holistic view and what it suggests is, compared with last year, the outlook for the next 12 months is still positive but it is a lot weaker than it was a year ago."

When this year's research was published last month, Fidelity stressed the latest findings should be taken in the context of a "buoyant" 2018 survey. Despite "the notable dampening of confidence", the group added, its analysts remained "cautiously optimistic" for the year ahead as a sentiment score above zero indicated improving sentiment.

Expanding on that in the video interview above, Dropkin pulls out some key takeaways from the survey, before commenting on the principal risks highlighted by Fidelity's analysts as well as some of the more surprising findings.