Wall Street strategist Brian Belski is taking a contrarian view to many of his peers. While others are lowering their year-end targets due to President Trump’s tariffs, Belski remains optimistic about the market’s prospects.
Belski maintains a 6,700-year end target for the S&P 500, representing a 37% rally from current levels. This outlook is at odds with many other strategists who now project the index will end 2025 lower than where it began the year.
The economics team at JPMorgan is even calling for a recession in the back half of 2025, citing Trump’s tariffs as a major concern. However, Belski believes that the market tends to lead the economy and that it’s unlikely President Trump would want to be seen as responsible for pushing the economy into a recession.
Belski analyzed past sell-offs and found that the S&P 500 typically rebounds sharply from such periods, delivering impressive returns over the next year. He remains overweight on Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Information Technology sectors, which are all underperforming due to the tariff concerns.
The near-term outlook is uncertain, but Belski’s scenario of Trump softening his stance on tariffs has yet to emerge, fueling further selling in stocks. This has led some on Wall Street to believe that investors need to accept that tariffs are here to stay and may lead to further downside for stocks.
However, others like Neil Dutta at Renaissance Macro believe that investors should think of tariffs as a means to an end or an end in themselves, rather than just a short-term issue. This mindset shift could help investors prepare for the long term and consider getting back into the market when conditions improve.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-wall-street-bull-still-sees-a-stock-market-rally-these-levies-will-eventually-be-negotiated-lower-160859105.html