This year, Wall Street extended its artificial intelligence-powered bull market into a second year, far surpassing the year-end forecasts made by top strategists. In fact, all of them turned out to be very wrong. Original 2024 outlooks for the S & P 500 ranged from a low of just 4,200 at JPMorgan by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, to a high of 5,200 from Oppenheimer’s John Stoltzfus. The S & P 500 closed Thursday at 6,051.25, more than 800 points above the highest forecast at the start of the year. The year-to-date gain stands at 27%. Several factors caught most of the Street off guard. First, many strategists expected a recession to take hold of the U.S. economy in 2024. That did not happen. Instead, the economy kept growing at a steady pace, and the labor market continued expanding, all while inflation trended down toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target. Second, the Fed was able to start cutting rates despite the consistent economic growth. The central bank began its rate-cutting campaign with a bang in September, lowering fed funds by 50 basis points, or half a percentage point. Third, Donald Trump’s return to the White House fueled market euphoria, as investors bet on deregulation and lower taxes. These all combined to push stocks to dozens of new all-time highs this year. With less than a month left to trade, the S & P 500 is ahead 26.9%, and that does not even include dividends. As a result, strategists have updated their outlooks throughout 2024 to reflect the altered conditions. The highest now is 6,200, also from Oppenheimer, suggesting another 2.5% upside from current levels. JPMorgan has kept its original target, on paper at least, making it still the lowest forecast on Wall Street. Barring a December cataclysm, strategists from Evercore ISI, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Wells Fargo Investment Institute were also proven too bearish this year. Evercore ISI senior managing director Julian Emanuel and Goldman Sachs chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin had original year-end targets of 4,750 and 4,700, respectively, although both have since updated their forecasts to 6,000. Goldman’s team actually raised its 2024 forecast to 5,100 before the new year even began , after stocks took off heading into the end of 2023. Wells Fargo’s target also started the year at 4,700, while UBS originally forecast a 4,940 year-end level for the S & P 500. Both still have targets below 6,000. Bank of America’s Savita Subramanian originally had a year-end target of 5,000 for the S & P 500, which closed 2023 at about 4,770. She raised it to 5,400 in early March , which at the time suggested about 5% upside, and most recently hiked it to 6,000 on Nov. 15, saying the broad market index is “statistically expensive on almost every metric” but higher quality, less leveraged and more “asset-light” than prior decades. Looking ahead, several strategists have already released their 2025 outlooks and think there is plenty of room for U.S. stocks to run. For Wall Street’s latest year-end targets for the S & P 500, check out CNBC’s comprehensive Market Strategist Survey , updated quarterly or whenever an investment bank’s own forecast is updated.
