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Three Wall Street strategy teams have cut their S&P 500 (^GSPC) outlooks amid the recent market drawdown in markets.
The calls all have the same flavor. Economic growth forecasts have been falling because the uncertainty around President Trump’s policy plans wears on. This comes counter to the environment many expected when consensus projected one other 12 months of strong economic growth for the US economy.
At a high level, there’s also been a sentiment shift, with strategists now arguing that markets might not trade at the prolonged valuations seen over the past two years, and due to this fact the benchmark S&P 500 likely won’t rise as much. There’s also the straightforward proven fact that any rally in stocks is coming from a lower start line and due to this fact may not see the huge rise required to achieve prior targets.
Still, 16 of the 17 strategists we track at Yahoo Finance forecast the benchmark index rallying from here.
What stands out now, because the chart below shows, is that there is not much of a transparent consensus besides a general concept that stocks will go up a minimum of somewhat.
With an upside range as little as 6,200 and as high as 7,100, forecasters are calling for the S&P 500 to rally anywhere from about 10% to greater than 26%.
Broadly, strategists feel the present hesitancy within the stock market will proceed until there’s more clarity on President Trump’s policies. The extent to which stocks rally from there likely is dependent upon the outlook for the economy and company profits.
Deutsche Bank chief strategist Bankim Chadha wrote in a recent research note that if the souring mood concerning the president’s tariff plans prompts a “credible plan to resolve tariff uncertainty, it’ll allow the business cycle to proceed.”
In that case, Chadha believes the S&P 500 could hit 7,000 this 12 months.
Meanwhile, other strategists are beginning to talk more about how the trail ahead may not be so linear.
“While we don’t imagine that a pullback beyond the ten% drawdown that has already been sustained is inevitable, we do imagine that the trail for stocks between now and December has gotten rockier with stronger headwinds,” RBC Capital Markets’ Lori Calvasina wrote in a recent note when lowering her year-end S&P 500 goal to six,200 from 6,600.
Last week, Citi equity strategist Scott Chronert told us a couple of “sentiment shift” amongst investors over the past few months as more of their clients have been asking about the probabilities the S&P 500 hits their “bear case” of 5,500. This can be a stark change from the past two years when the prevailing query was whether or not strategists had been bullish enough.