The egos have been brought crashing down to earth. Not so long ago, the City was full of strutting bankers confidently predicting the booming future to anyone who would listen. Now anyone wanting proof of just how far beleaguered bankers have fallen, need look no further than their predictions for the FTSE 100 index of leading shares for the year ahead.

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Nervous analysts are shunning the limelight, anxious not to get it wrong after many failed to forecast this year's stock market rout, the worst tumble since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001-2. The normal flood of analyst forecasts for the next 12 months has this year been reduced to a trickle.

Asked by the Evening Standard to predict a target for Footsie at the end of 2009, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan were just some of the firms who declined to comment. The banks may still churn out buy, sell and hold ratings on individual shares every day but it seems they don't want to give their views on the overall market.

This is what Lehman Brothers had to say last December about why there wouldn't be a serious economic downturn in 2008: "Back in the early 1990s, along with a recession in the housing market as well as the wider economy, with sterling pegged to the German mark, interest rates were unable to respond. This time round we think the outlook for the UK market is encouraging."

Lehman's prediction for the Footsie at the end of December 2008 was for the index to close at 7300. That's about 3000 points higher than it currently stands and a sign of where the bankrupt bank began to get its sums wrong - although Lehman analysts were not the only ones to be so bullish.

So this year, analysts are being a lot more cautious and including lots of caveats. Based on the responses of around a dozen analysts and banks, the average forecast is for the Footsie to end 2009 at 4688 - only marginally higher than its current level. While share research on individual firms comes with minute detail and target prices, brokers giving end-of-2009 FTSE 100 figures use far large margins. They do have a point because there has been a rapid turnover of companies in the Footsie in the past year - firms are ranked primarily by market capitalisation and tend to be dropped if they fall below the top 100. Five firms were earmarked for ejection last week, for example, in the latest quarterly review.

And when it comes to forecasting, it also helps to have a sense of humour after the recent turmoil. "We predict the FTSE will end 2009 at 4700 points - give or take 3000!" said Barclays Wealth's Henk Potts.

"2008 was always set to be volatile but few could predict just how dramatic it would be," he added. "Many 2008 predictions were much too optimistic. It's been a disappointing year."

Likewise, Hargreaves Lansdown's Richard Hunter admits that his 5000 forecast for the Footise in 2009 "could easily be 3000".

Analysts don't tend to rush to apologise for past misjudgments but Morgan Stanley's 2009 outlook is close to a mea culpa. "Last year we chose the title of Fat Tails, Lean Times for our outlook report, but we can safely say that we were nowhere near fat or lean enough," said the broker. Alongside its 2009 year-end prediction of 4300, it hedged bets with an extra "bear case" 2500 figure and "bull case" 6500 forecast.

Morgan Stanley added: "It now appears certain we are heading for a rather nasty global recession and a very significant contraction in corporate profits."

Over at Gartmore Investment, Phil Wagstaff said: "I would say 4600 seems likely. The next few months may well be difficult, with corporate earnings falling as the economy slows. But by the end of next year, we should be looking forward to an economic recovery."

One exception to the grey predictions comes from UBS, where analysts are sticking their necks out with a bullish year-end forecast of 5800 that factors in a share price recovery of nearly 40%. "2009 will bring signs of a dawn in confidence with the first faint light appearing earlier than most investors expect," said analyst David Bianco.

So most analysts seem to reckon the worst could be over for the Footise. Few suggest the index is going to slip below 3665 - the low it reached on 27 October after the collapse of Lehman and the British Government bank recapitalisations. But the pessimists will point to the aftermath of the dot-com bubble in 2003, when the index slumped to around 3200, and wonder if things are really better now.