In This Article:
RBC Capital Markets reduced its S&P 500 (^GSPC) year-end target to 6,200 from 6,600, while investors search for indicators that the market (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) has finally bottomed out.
Yahoo Finance senior markets reporter Josh Schafer sits down with Julie Hyman and BD8 Capital Partners CEO and CIO Barbara Doran to speak more about Wall Street's market forecasts.
Also catch Josh Schafer cover whether the options market could be signaling stability to come for equities.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Well, let's talk, uh, sort of take a step back, take a look at the market sentiment which has been shifting downward, you know, the move today notwithstanding. And some investor expectations for the S&P 500 are starting to follow that sentiment. Markets reporter Josh Shafer is here with a closer look. So we got another forecast cut today, this time from RBC.
Yes, so this is our third S&P 500 year-end target cut that we've seen over the last week. This one from RBC Capital Markets for Kalofassina. She now sees S&P 500 at 6200 at the end of the year, down from 6600. Of course, couple ways to cut that. 6200 is a pretty decent rally from where we actually are now, right? But what I think Lori highlighted within that note has been the trend, which is, our economics team now sees lower GDP than we initially thought. When we plug that GDP growth into our model, so 1.6% GDP instead of 2% GDP, it moves the numbers around a little bit, right, and we're not going to get to that same level of the index. What I thought was interesting also within the note though, we were just you guys were just discussing the potential for a bottom, right? And how do we sort of call bottom here? Obviously calling bottom itself literally very difficult, right? Most people don't recommend that. But the concept that Lori was highlighting was we've seen sort of the vibe shift in consumer sentiment and the soft survey data. We haven't confirmed that with hard data yet, so it's hard to judge basically where the market's headed until we get more hard data. Not necessarily what even is the hard data going to say, but just we need to get more hard data, more jobs reports, more earnings guidance, more information on how corporates are actually digesting this at this point.
Well, and sort of the, the other thing that we've all been discussing is the so-called uncertainty in the market right now, right? Which tariffs are going to stick? Goes along with the hard data. What's it actually going to confirm? Even if it's bad, at least we'll know, I guess, is the idea behind all of that.
Barbara, I'm curious when you look for sort of the, the bottoming out of the market or what sort of indicators you're watching right now that feel like we've gotten to a point where you want to get back in. What things do you look at?
Well, a number of things. You know, on a stock by stock basis, you know, when you've seen the names that we mentioned in video earlier, or any of them. So when you look at the charts and where the PEs are, and their earnings are still good. You know, even, you know, I don't see a recession. I mean, this economy is starting from such a strong point. You know, even if you put in worst case, you know, the stocks are oversold. You know, so, and then you also look at something, Friday was interesting because that we had the University of Michigan sentiment numbers, which weren't great. You know, the last two sentiment numbers, um, for consumers a couple weeks ago were not great either, you know, they showed a big jump in short-term inflation expectations. University of Michigan Friday was also long term and that's more worrisome, you know, because if that gets in, you sort of the self-perpetuating cycle. And yet, with those bad numbers the market went up. So, I think that's a very, you know, that kind of thing is what you look for. And today I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't have been surprised the market went either way. I'd have been surprised if it had a big down day, but I thought it's finding a base in here. It's feeling its way. And so it's an iterative process, you know, at this point. And it was also, it was very interesting, you know, Tom Lee's work, you know, he looked at, you know, this has been one of the, the fastest corrections, you know, that we've had. And uh, down 10%, S&P was down 10% last week. But Tom looked at the last six before this that were, as you know, were super fast. So he looked at the seven last super fast corrections, and with that exception, and we'll see if this is the one exception, the market was higher three, six, and nine months later. So you know, I think we've had just a big overreaction and people assuming, oh my god, the sky is falling.
The rally off the bad news is an interesting point to me too, right? If we continue to see that off some of these prints, a lot of people will argue that that means that the bad news is of course priced in at that point, right? And so when you have that quick swift correction that happens in less than a month, maybe we got a little aggressive here. Julie, we were talking last week about some strategists arguing we might have already priced in a shallow recession. But no one's actually really calling for a shallow recession, right? So from that argument you could say, maybe we just went a little bit too far here. And sort of where, where do we actually land on the course of economic growth this year? What is the actual projection this year? Sure, it's slower than before, but is it really that bad? And I don't really know if we have a solid answer to that.
I mean, if you take the other side of that, I would say what's going to be the thing that takes us out of it. In other words, yes, maybe the market rallied on Friday despite bad news, but what then is going to be the positive catalyst? What would give people a reason to buy sustainably? Is it just the absence of bad news or is it actual good news?
Yeah, well that's a good, that's a good question. I think one, it will be the absence of bad news. We stop hearing, you know, that we're raising, you know, uh, tack or the, uh, tariffs on champagne 200%. If that slows down, which it will at some point. And I don't think in the, in the, in the not so distant future. But I also think we're going to continue to hang on all the data, jobless claims every Thursday because the Dodge layoffs, they had targeted about 200,000 layoffs which in the, in the grand scheme of things is a teeny tiny portion of the US and it'll be concentrated mostly in the DC, Virginia area. You know, but it's really, you know, a question of what happens next in terms of, you know, employment. And all the tertiary and secondary effects of that. But it looks like we're going to be able to absorb it, you know, because there's still, there's still jobs out there. We're kind of at a one for one ratio, the jolts number was better than expected last time in terms of job openings. But I think right now we're kind of, you know, the Fed has told us and the numbers support it that we're kind of in balance, you know, in terms of jobs and openings. And so we'll keep looking. The unemployment number is good, 4.1%. And it could take a while for that to show up if it's going to show up.
Right. All right. Well, Josh, thanks very much. We'll, you'll keep monitoring those forecast cuts. See how they shake out.