Why Wall Street’s S&P 500 forecast for 2025 is likely to be ‘way off’
Before you put a lot of faith in the 2025 market outlooks from major strategists, here’s one reason to think that even Wall Street’s brightest minds could get it wrong. The average forecast among 15 widely-followed Wall Street strategists stands at 6,630 for 2025, equivalent to about a 10% gain next year, according to CNBC Pro’s Market Strategist Survey . That projected return is in line with the historical returns of any given year for the broad market. But Juan Correa, strategist for global asset allocation at BCA Research, takes issue with the Street’s outlook, saying the range of forecasts is too narrow. More importantly, he pointed out that the market, in fact, doesn’t often produce average returns. “A paradox exist in equity markets: Average returns do not occur often,” Correa said in a note to clients entitled “Average Is Rare – Why Most S & P 500 Targets For 2025 Will Probably Be Way Off.” What usually ends up happening, however, is that the “the S & P 500 likes extremes,” Correa wrote. Looking at the S & P 500’s total annual returns since 1926, the market has only delivered returns within the average target from sell-side firms about two out of five years, or 40% of the time, BCA Research said. If the outliers are excluded — the top two and bottom two forecasts — that number goes down to just 17%, meaning strategists get it right fewer than one year in five. .SPX YTD mountain S & P 500 This is why BCA Research sees the equity benchmark as more likely to either fall below 5500 or rise above 7100, rather than stay within the Street’s range of forecasts. “As a result, our negative view will either be spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong,” Correa said. According to CNBC Pro’s Market Strategist Survey , the highest target comes from John Stoltzfus at Oppenheimer, who sees the S & P 500 reaching 7,100 next year. The lowest target is 6,400 from Jonathan Golub at UBS. The S & P 500 looks set to wrap up a strong 2024, up nearly 27% excluding reinvested dividends and on track for its best year since 2019. Investors gained newfound optimism after the election of Donald Trump because of his market-friendly policies, while easing inflation, lower interest rates and weaker energy prices also provided the market with support. For the record, BCA’s own formal, end-of-2025 forecast is a spectacularly bearish 4450 from Correa’s colleague Peter Berezin, BCA’s chief global strategist and director of research. BCA excludes its own targets from its survey research.