The 96 senior investment personnel surveyed by Fitch in June puts corporate bonds at the top of the heap for issuance this year, followed by asset-backed securities, RMBS and CMBS. That was the same pecking order investors followed in the January edition of the biannual survey.

Slightly more than 2% of respondents to the latest survey said they expect “very strong” or “strong” CMBS issuance this year, compared to about 36% who hold that expectation for investment-grade or speculative-grade corporate bonds. The 64.4% of respondents who anticipated “moderate” or “low” CMBS issuance this year compares favorably to the 34.5% who said that about CDOs, as does the percentage of investors who think new issues will be only “minimal”: 33.3% in the case of CMBS and 64.4% in the case of CDOs. Compared to the January survey, “there was a slight improvement in issuance forecasts for CMBS over the coming year but not for CDOs,” according to Fitch.

As was the case with ABS and RMBS spreads, investors who anticipate that CMBS spreads will remain within recent ranges over the next 12 months constitute a majority. The percentage of respondents holding that view of CMBS spreads has increased from 28.3% to 41.6% over the past year.

Although they expressed some qualms about the prospect of increased financial regulations, two-thirds of investors surveyed said they see lending conditions loosening over the next year. Moreover, the European debt crisis and geopolitical conditions each ranked higher as risk factors than the unintended effects of new laws. Most survey respondents don’t see inflation as a major concern, and only 2% said they’re concerned the US will slip back into a recession.