Firm that called 2025 nearly perfectly - until a moment of doubt - now has highest S&P 500 target on Wall Street

By Steve Goldstein

Oppenheimer strategists target 8,100 for the S&P 500 by end of 2026

The new Wall Street high for S&P 500 forecasts is 8,100.

It could have been a moment for a victory lap.

On Dec. 9, 2024, Oppenheimer Asset Management strategists led by John Stoltzfus set a 7,100 year-end target for the S&P 500 SPX. Roughly a year later, that target is just 3% away. The problem is, the Oppenheimer team didn't hold their nerve after seeing the freefall from the April "Liberation Day" tariff announcement and cut the price target down to 5,950, before deciding at the end of July that 7,100 was the right call after all.

As far as four-month predictions go, it still was a pretty good one, and Stoltzfus and Co. are back with their S&P 500 target for the end of 2026, which is 8,100 - the highest forecast on all of Wall Street. (Deutsche Bank is close behind at 8,000, and the median of the forecasts compiled by MarketWatch is at 7,500.)

The reason is simple enough. The economy, and corporate profits, held up better than forecast. Why should that stop? "Our positive outlook for the S&P 500 is based on a number of factors that include persistent resilience evidenced in U.S. economic data, S&P 500 corporate results throughout most of this year beating expectations. This, in our view, augurs for further improvement in corporate results in 2026," they say.

They expect a rate cut on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve, and then one or two more in 2026. (The market is expecting at least another two cuts in 2026.)

"At the core of what lies ahead for our 2026 target price to be achieved lies monetary policy, fiscal policy and the continuing progress of innovation and corporate earnings growth, all of which have been supportive of stock prices and are key to growing earnings and revenues in the year ahead," they say.

They have outperform ratings on information technology XLK as well as consumer discretionary XLY and industrials XLI, while having underperform on healthcare XLV, energy XLE and real estate . The consumer, they say, is not dead.

"We note that while surveys of consumer sentiment (soft data) reflect concern by the consumer near term about inflation and the health of the economy, the hard data or sales data persists in showing that the consumer continues to shop if somewhat selectively and at a slower pace reflective of some sensitivity to prices," they say.

The market

As Fed week begins, U.S. stock futures (ES00) (NQ00) edged higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury BX:TMUBMUSD10Y also rose.

   Key asset performance                                                Last       5d      1m     YTD      1y 
   S&P 500                                                              6870.4     0.85%   0.56%  16.81%   13.51% 
   Nasdaq Composite                                                     23,578.13  0.91%   2.49%  22.10%   18.72% 
   10-year Treasury                                                     4.148      5.60    2.70   -42.80   -5.50 
   Gold                                                                 4243.7     -0.50%  2.92%  60.79%   58.17% 
   Oil                                                                  60.19      1.14%   0.23%  -16.25%  -11.68% 
   Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points 

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The buzz

There's a new analyst at Morgan Stanley covering Tesla (TSLA), who cut the firm's rating to equal-weight from overweight.

IBM (IBM) is expected to announce an $11 billion deal to buy data-infrastructure company Confluent (CFLT), according to the Wall Street Journal.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) slipped in premarket trade after President Donald Trump indicated his administration was likely to closely scrutinize Netflix's (NFLX) planned purchase of studio and streaming assets.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) announced several executive changes ahead of Warren Buffett's retirement.

Magnum Ice Cream is trading for the first time in London, Amsterdam and New York after being spun out of Unilever (UL).

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The chart

Demand for office space in New York City took a big turn higher in the third quarter. "The improvement is consistent with increasing return-to-office mandates. According to Placer AI, New York (along with Miami) continues to lead the nation in terms of returning workers to the office," say economist at Wells Fargo. "The outperformance appears to be owed to the dense clusters of advanced service industries, e.g. banking, finance and legal services, where RTO has been more prevalent."

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

   Ticker  Security name 
   NVDA    Nvidia 
   TSLA    Tesla 
   GME     GameStop 
   TSM     Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 
   PLTR    Palantir Technologies 
   SMX     SMX (Security Matters) 
   AMD     Advanced Micro Devices 
   CETX    Cemtrex 
   META    Meta Platforms 
   AAPL    Apple 

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-Steve Goldstein

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12-08-25 0924ET