Stock Market Forecasts: More Than Just a Guess?

The only real purpose stock forecasts serve is to shed light on how forecasters themselves are feeling, which one might consider a proxy for investor sentiment at the institutional level. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 2, 2023.Every new year, investing’s greatest visionaries exercise their powers by predicting exactly where the stock market will be at the end of the year.

The annual procession of forecasts comes courtesy of some of the highest-paid strategists in the business from the major brokerages and investment banks. Of course, everyone knows the stock market is unpredictable. But the Wall Street brain trust must be capable of foreseeing something worthwhile in the year ahead. Right? Not really. Not only does the average market call tend to be comically out of bounds. But also consider the wide range of outcomes imagined at the outset of each calendar year. That, too, has proven to be next to useless. There are 15-plus strategist targets that get compiled each year from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets. A year ago, the predictions from this group for how the S&P 500 index would perform in 2024 ranged from a loss of 12 per cent to a gain of 15 per cent. The index ended the year up by 23 per cent – much better than even the Street’s most bullish forecast. It was a similar story in 2023. The rosiest prediction going into the year called for an increase of 17 per cent in U.S. stock. The S&P 500 ended the year on a 24-per-cent gain. Granted, those were two extraordinary years. Not since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s has the U.S. stock market clocked such blockbuster years back-to-back.A couple of years ago, Vanguard Group looked at the reliability of market forecasts since the end of 2010. The analysis found that 75 per cent of the time one-year returns were either higher than the most optimistic forecast, or lower than the most pessimistic

South Africa South Africa Latest News, South Africa South Africa Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Stock market today: Wall Street hits more records following a just-right jobs reportNEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose to records after data suggested the job market remains solid enough to keep the economy going, but not so strong that it raises immediate worries about inflation. The S&P 500 climbed 0.
Source: SooToday - 🏆 8. / 85 Read more »

Stock market today: Wall Street drifts around its records in early tradingNEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting around their records ahead of a week that could cement expectations for a coming cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 slipped 0.
Source: SooToday - 🏆 8. / 85 Read more »

Market Factors: A simple, effective tool for stock picking from Goldman SachsPlus, finding attractive REITs
Source: globeandmail - 🏆 5. / 92 Read more »

Stock market today: Nvidia drags Wall Street lower as oil and gold riseNEW YORK (AP) — A slide for market superstar Nvidia helped pull U.S. stock indexes down from their records. The S&P 500 fell 0.6% Monday, coming off its 57th all-time high of the year so far. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.
Source: SooToday - 🏆 8. / 85 Read more »

Stock market today: Wall Street holds steady ahead of inflation reportNEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting in the runup to the latest update on inflation due out Wednesday. The S&P 500 was flat early Tuesday, a day after pulling back from its latest all-time high.
Source: SooToday - 🏆 8. / 85 Read more »

Stock market today: Wall Street drifts lower as it waits for inflation dataNEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes drifted lower in the runup to the highlight of the week for the market, the latest update on inflation. The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% Tuesday and marked its first back-to-back losses in three weeks.
Source: SooToday - 🏆 8. / 85 Read more »