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The stock market could jump as much as 10% by the year-end, Citi’s stock-trading strategy head said.
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Stuart Kaiser told Bloomberg TV that the uber-bull case is now “a plausible scenario.”
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He said the economy only must avoid a recession, which might ultimately depend on the labor market.
Wall Street is forecasting S&P 500 highs that reach past the 6,000 threshold. This bullishness may be well earned, Citi’s Stuart Kaiser said.
“The uber-bull case, I feel, for all of this 12 months has been: you avoid a recession, you get insurance cuts, right? And that’s now a plausible scenario,” the firm’s head of US equity-trading strategy told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.
If that’s achieved, stocks can surge one other 5% to 10% by the highest of this 12 months, Kaiser said.
To this point, the second half of those conditions have been met. This month, the Federal Reserve finally began reducing rates of interest, in a move meant to forestall a future economic slump.
This precautionary “insurance” cut — amounting to a 50-basis-point reduction to the federal funds rate — was embraced by stock investors, and indexes have since notched recent record highs.
To Kaiser’s point, it’ll proceed as long as a recession doesn’t materialize. But though the Fed emphasized that it was not forecasting a looming downturn during its latest policy meeting, all of it hinges on incoming labor market data, he noted.
Since August, slipping employment conditions have been the core driver of slowdown fears. Investors might need to see labor figures remain intact in upcoming monthly data, or else recession outlooks could turn into increasingly valid.
“Our view is risk reward is difficult because it’s really depending on month-to-month,” Kaiser noted, warning that recessionary prints would easily upend any Fed efforts to support the market.
Other banks are also eyeing jobs data.
Based on Morgan Stanley, investors can have a superb time if unemployment falls below 4.1% and non-farm payrolls reach over 150,000. This will be the best-case scenario for the market, keeping momentum going.
Otherwise, trading should prepare for the worst if unemployment climbs above 4.3% and payrolls slide under 100,000.
“The Fed puts not going to protect you if you get that kind of data, and that’s the reason we predict the danger reward is form of a bit bit off immediately,” Kaiser said.
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