Goldman Sachs raised its year-end target for the S&P 500 index from 5,200 points to 5,600 points, pointing out that the earnings growth of five large technology companies is strong and raising reasonable PE. The latest target has a 3.1% upside from last week's closing price of 5,431 points.
Microsoft (MSFT.US), Nvidia (NVDA.US), Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), and Meta (META.US) have collectively risen 45% this year, accounting for a quarter of the S&P 500's market cap. Goldman Sachs expects real interest rates to remain roughly unchanged until the end of the year, with strong earnings growth supporting a 15x PE ratio for the index.
Goldman Sachs pointed out that the US election remains a major risk, and volatility in the indices will increase before the election, but after the election, volatility will generally decline, and the indices will rise to higher levels.