Davos, Switzerland | Business leaders are teetering on a see-saw of confidence and caution about the year ahead, if the auguries of Davos are to be believed.

Since Davos typically draws in the world’s top corporate chieftains and their satraps and consiglieri, whose collective finger rests vigilantly on the global economy’s pulse, the mood in the Alps in January is often a prescient portent of what lies just ahead.