Glob­al in­vestors are los­ing faith in Chi­na, giv­ing the coun­try's mar­kets their worst rat­ing in more than two years in the lat­est Bloomberg poll. About a quar­ter of those sur­veyed say they ex­pect Chi­nese mar­kets to be among the worst per­form­ers over the next year. That's the high­est neg­a­tive read­ing that the coun­try has re­ceived in the quar­ter­ly Bloomberg Glob­al Poll since Jan­u­ary 2010 and was sec­ond on­ly to the 45 per cent rat­ing that the Eu­ro­pean Union re­ceived in the Sep­tem­ber 4 sur­vey.

Chi­na "will suf­fer dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly from a glob­al slow­down in growth," said Ben­jamin Dunn, a poll par­tic­i­pant and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer in Crest­ed Butte, Col­orado, for port­fo­lio man­age­ment com­pa­ny Al­pha The­o­ry, in an e-mail. It "will be un­able to pre­vent a hard land­ing" of its econ­o­my.

The US again came out on top in the poll of 847 in­vestors, an­a­lysts and traders who are Bloomberg sub­scribers: 46 per cent say its mar­kets will be among those of­fer­ing the best re­turns over the next year, the same as in the pre­vi­ous sur­vey in May. Close to three-quar­ters ex­pect the Fed­er­al Re­serve to act next week to sup­port the econ­o­my, ei­ther by ex­tend­ing its pledge of low in­ter­est rates, buy­ing bonds, or by do­ing both.

Com­modi­ties in gen­er­al and gold in par­tic­u­lar gained favour with in­vestors in the poll. Eigh­teen per cent of those sur­veyed ex­pect com­modi­ties to of­fer the high­est re­turns over the next year. That's up from 13 per cent in May and was sec­ond on­ly to stocks, which won the back­ing of a third of in­vestors. Gold came in third, with 16 per cent, up from 11 per cent in May.

"Mon­e­tary eas­ing by glob­al cen­tral banks will push com­mod­i­ty prices high­er," Anu­raj Be­nara, a poll re­spon­dent and se­nior man­ag­er of in­sti­tu­tion­al eq­ui­ty sales for SMC Glob­al Se­cu­ri­ties in Mum­bai, In­dia, said in an e-mail. Some in­vestors al­so are turn­ing bull­ish on cri­sis-racked Eu­rope, though a greater per­cent­age re­mains bear­ish.

More than one in five picked EU mar­kets as among those that will of­fer the best re­turns over the next year. That's the high­est read­ing for the re­gion since the poll be­gan in 2009 and was sec­ond on­ly to the US in the lat­est sur­vey, which was tak­en be­fore the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank de­cid­ed yes­ter­day on an un­lim­it­ed bond-pur­chase pro­gramme. Brazil was third and Chi­na fourth in the poll.

Chi­na was a favourite of glob­al in­vestors in the wake of 2008-09 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, as stepped-up gov­ern­ment spend­ing and in­ter­est rate cuts pow­ered the econ­o­my to a year-over-year growth rate of 11.9 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2010.

Bloomberg