The S&P 500 (^GSPC) is back within one percentage point of an all-time high. One of Wall Street’s notorious bulls believes the benchmark index has plenty further to run this year.
BMO Capital Markets chief investment strategist Brian Belski boosted his year-end target to 6,700 from a prior forecast of 6,100. Belski had previously reduced his forecast amid the tariff turmoil that tanked markets in April.
But now, with the market’s largest tariff fears believed by strategists to be behind investors, Belski detailed a more sanguine outlook in a note sent to clients on Tuesday entitled “same as it ever was.”
“The signposts we called out in April are largely in place – markets are transitioning TO ‘show me’ FROM ‘scare me,”‘ Belski wrote. “We believe performance is broadening, reactions from daily rhetoric are calming, and actual corporate guidance will increase coming out of the 2Q earnings reporting period.”
Belski’s call for a roughly 10% rally for the S&P 500 from current levels joins a growing list of such predictions from rejuvenated bulls as the market marches back toward record highs. No fewer than 11 Wall Street firms lowered their S&P 500 targets amid the market sell-off in April. At least eight of those have since raised their bets on where the index will end 2025.
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Belski points out that economic forecasts have once again begun reverting higher, along with projections for corporate earnings this year. In fact, he argues, earnings estimates for Communication Services (XLC), Consumer Discretionary (XLY), Technology (XLK), and “ESPECIALLY” Financials (XLF) likely haven’t recovered enough.
Belski admitted he cut his target on April 9, prior to Trumps’ first large “reciprocal” tariff delay, explaining that maintaining a market target that at the time was 30% above the S&P 500’s current level was “not thoughtful.” But the narrative quickly shifted with President Trump’s various tariff pauses pushing the effective US tariff rate from a peak above 25% to about 14%, per the Yale Budget Lab.
With that shift has come the unwind of several popular trades of the early April period, including the so-called Sell America trade, which Belski believes was overdone.
“The death of ‘American Exceptionalism’ was widely exaggerated and too vehemently applauded to hold any merit or duration in our view,” Belski wrote. “After all, we continue to believe US stocks are the best global equity asset, offering the most consistent fundamentals, ingenuity, and diversification than any other market in the world.”