Goldman Sachs strategists have raised their year-end target for the S&P 500 index for the third time this Friday to reflect the optimistic expectations of profit growth and the US economy at this Wall Street giant; The latest estimate from Goldman Sachs stock strategists, led by David Kostin, is that the S&P 500 index is expected to rise to 5600 points by the end of this year.
On June 15th, Financial News Agency reported that Goldman Sachs Group's strategists have raised the end-of-year target for the S&P 500 index for the third time this Friday (June 14th) to reflect their optimistic expectations for profit growth and the US economy.
Goldman Sachs stock strategists, led by David Kostin, now expect the S&P 500 index to rise to 5600 points by the end of this year, higher than their February prediction of 5200 points.
The new target means that the index will rise by about 3% above Friday's closing price. The S&P 500 index fell 0.54% this week to close at 5431.64 points.
It is worth mentioning that the latest upward target of Goldman Sachs strategists has been tied with Jonathan Golub of UBS Group and Brian Belski of the Bank of Montreal Capital Markets as the highest forecast on Wall Street.
Kostin, chief US stock strategist of Goldman Sachs, wrote in a note to clients on Friday that the upward target was due to "downward revision of earnings below average and higher reasonable price-earnings ratios."
Interestingly, a month ago, Goldman Sachs strategists confidently reiterated that the company maintained its year-end target for the S&P 500 index of 5200 points and believed that there was no further room for further growth in the S&P 500 index before December.
Goldman Sachs strategists first made target predictions for 2024 in November last year, and then raised this prediction twice in December and February respectively.
Despite maintaining their earnings forecasts for 2024 and 2025, they pointed out that strong earnings growth from the top five technology giants offset "typical negative revision patterns of per-share earnings consensus estimates." Kostin also raised the P/E ratio estimate of the S&P 500 index from 19.5 times to 20.4 times and believed it is now more reasonable.
Kostin also simulated several other scenarios-in some cases, the stock market may rise higher than its latest benchmark forecast.
For example, if the range of rising stocks expands and pushes up the S&P 500 equal weight index, then the S&P 500 index may rise 9% to 5900 points by the end of 2024. In his most optimistic scenario, if the "uniqueness" of large-cap stocks continues, the index may soar to 6300 points by the end of this year.
On the contrary, if profit forecasts are too optimistic, or if investors are worried about an economic recession, the S&P 500 index may experience a decline of about 13%, falling to 4700 points.