With the Federal Reserve's interest rate meeting approaching, experts have raised the probability of a US recession in the next 12 months to 33%.

According to Bitpush, amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine, economic slowdown, and stock market turmoil, investors generally expect the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates after the two-day meeting. According to a recent CNBC Federal Reserve survey, experts have raised their expectations for a recession and inflation as the Fed faces greater uncertainty from rapidly rising prices and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The report showed that forecasters raised the probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months to 33%, 10 percentage points higher than the survey on February 1; the probability of a recession in Europe was 50%.

"The tax impact of higher commodity prices is likely to slow the pace of rate hikes more than inflation causing a faster pace of increases," wrote Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.

But Rob Morgan, senior vice president of Mosaic, believes: "I expect the Fed to raise interest rates six times in 2022, by 25 basis points each time. If CPI reaches 9% in the March or April report, the Fed may be forced to raise interest rates by 50 basis points in May."

The 33 respondents, including fund managers, strategists and economists, predicted that the Fed will raise interest rates an average of 4.7 times this year, bringing the funds rate to 1.4% by the end of the year and 2% by the end of 2023. Nearly half of the respondents believed that the central bank would raise interest rates five to seven times this year.

The rate-hike cycle is expected to end at a peak funds rate of 2.4%, roughly the Fed’s neutral rate. But half of respondents believe the central bank may eventually have to raise rates above neutral to keep inflation in check.

Driving the rate hikes is a forecast that the consumer price index will peak at 8.5% in March but taper off to end the year at 5.2%. That’s nearly a percentage point higher than in the February survey. The CPI is expected to rise a modest 3.3% in 2023, still above the Fed’s target.

“We may be on the cusp of a Fed rate hike at the same time that GDP is turning negative,” wrote Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group. “What a dire situation, but until inflation falls sharply, they have no choice but to keep going.”

While a recession is seen as more likely than in February, it is not the base case for most respondents. The average GDP forecast for this year slipped 0.8 percentage points, but remains slightly above trend at 2.8%. The GDP forecast for 2023 fell about half a percentage point from the previous survey to 2.4%.

Inflation forecasts for this year were already high, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made things worse, with nearly 90% of respondents saying they had raised their inflation outlook for 2022 because of the war. They raised their inflation forecasts by an average of 0.8 percentage points. 60% of respondents said they had lowered their GDP forecasts because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, down an average of half a percentage point.

The relatively positive outlook for stocks comes despite rising inflation expectations and lower growth prospects. Respondents downgraded their outlook for stocks, with only 53% saying stocks are overvalued relative to earnings and growth prospects. That’s down from 88% a year ago, the least pessimistic since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Meanwhile, the CNBC risk/reward ratio, which measures the probability of a 10% correction versus the probability of a 10% gain over the next six months, improved to -9 from -14, meaning a negative correction is less likely. The outlook for the S&P 500 this year fell to 4,431, suggesting stocks could rise 6% from current levels.

The Federal Reserve announcement is scheduled to be released at 2:00 PM Eastern Time on March 16, and Federal Reserve Chairman Powell will hold a press conference half an hour later .