Wall Street strategists are worried that US stocks are on a trip to nowhere, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go along for the ride. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s chief US equity strategist David Kostin said recently that the S&P 500 Index has essentially “no return” left in the tank for the rest of 2024. Here’s the Marketwatch writeup of his comments:
Kostin is actually pretty representative of his professional peer group. Among 21 Wall Street equity strategists surveyed by Bloomberg, the average and median respondent see the index ending the year at 5,065 and 5,170, respectively, implying that it will actually decline slightly from here. With 3-month Treasury bills offering a “risk-free” yield of about 5.4%, why would anyone stay in the stock market if expected upside is zilch? In essence, it’s because the gurus are so often wrong, and by such large margins.