A CFO.com article outlines the results of a survey of 86 finance chiefs released by Deloitte.  According to the article, CFOs are tempering their expectations for 2013 capital spending and domestic hiring. The quarterly survey, which tracks the thinking and actions of CFOs representing North American companies averaging more than $5 billion in annual revenue, found that 40% were increasingly pessimistic last quarter about their companies’ prospects: a pessimism similar to that of the previous quarter.

In the United States, net CFO optimism (the difference between the percent of CFOs expressing rising and falling optimism) fell from zero two quarters ago and -16 last quarter to -21 in the fourth quarter, according to Deloitte.

According to the report, CFOs expressed a wary outlook for capital spending, which is expected to rise just 4.2% over the next 12 months, below last quarter’s survey low of 4.6%. Further, investment in research and development hit its lowest expected growth rate on record for the two-year-old survey at 2.7% (3.0% in the third quarter).

Growth in expected marketing and advertising spend similarly dropped to a mere 2.0% from 3.5% in the third quarter.