NEW YORK - U.S. stocks will rack up only modest gains this year on top of a surge in recent months as a weakening profit outlook reins in market bulls, according to a Reuters poll of strategists.
Dovish signals from the U.S. Federal Reserve and, more recently, increased hopes of a trade deal between the United States and China have driven this year’s gains, reversing a late-2018 sell-off that resulted in the worst December performance since the Great Depression.Still, the poll’s end-2019 forecast is down from November, when strategists surveyed by Reuters predicted the index would reach 2,975 by year end.
Analysts have reduced earnings growth estimates for 2019 sharply in recent months. S&P 500 earnings are now estimated to grow just 4.1 percent for the year and to decline 1 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. “At least for now, all the good news is pretty much priced in here. I’m not looking for markets to really increase here by any significant amount,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York.
So far this year, S&P 500 industrials have had the best performance, followed by the technology sector, and several strategists were upbeat on one or both of those sectors.
A gain is a gain. Better than loss.
They are overpriced. Look out crash ahead.
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