Key Takeaways
- More than half of Wall Street’s major stock market forecasters have slashed their outlook for the S&P 500 in recent weeks amid turmoil sparked by President Trump’s tariffs.
- Confusion and uncertainty about the economic outlook have caused the gap between the Street’s highest and lowest year-end S&P 500 forecasts to widen significantly.
- The average year-end estimate from firms that have updated their year-end forecasts suggests Wall Street is now expecting stocks to decline slightly this year rather than post a third straight year of gains.
President Trump’s tariffs haven’t just rattled the stock market; they’ve also made it nearly impossible to estimate where stocks are headed.
Stock volatility jumped to fresh heights when President Trump on Wednesday, just hours after sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs went into effect, announced a 90-day pause to most of the charges. The pause sparked the S&P 500’s biggest rally since 2008 days after the index suffered its worst rout since 2020.
The president’s unpredictable and unprecedented trade policy has amplified uncertainty among investors, businesses, and consumers, leading to sharp declines in each group’s economic confidence.
Wall Street analysts have responded by slashing their stock market forecasts. Four major firms—Bank of America, Evercore ISI, Oppenheimer, and JPMorgan Chase—cut their targets on Monday before tariffs were paused. Bank of America and Evercore both lowered their year-end S&P 500 forecasts to 5,600 from 6,666 and 6,800, respectively. Oppenheimer cut its forecast by more than 16% to 5,950. JPMorgan became the most bearish of them all when it slashed its S&P 500 target to 5,200 from 6,500.
The uncertainty stemming from tariffs hasn’t just weighed on expectations; it has also made forecasting more difficult and contributed to a widening gulf between Wall Street’s optimists and pessimists. At the start of 2025, the 14 firms tracked by CNBC’s Market Strategist Survey were projecting the S&P 500 would end the year anywhere between 6,500 and 7,100. By this week, the delta between the low and high forecasts had tripled in size from 600 points to 1,800 points. Excluding firms that haven’t updated their year-end forecasts, the range has still expanded by 50% to 900 points.
On average, analysts still expect stocks to post a third consecutive positive year. The average forecast of 6,056 is about 3% above the S&P 500’s level at the end of 2024 and about 13% above its close on Friday.
However, updated forecasts tell a different story. Excluding firms that have yet to change their forecasts in light of Trump’s tariff and the recent sell-off, the average S&P 500 target is just 5,733, nearly 3% below where the index started the year and 7% above its current level.
