Wall Street, 5 predictions for 2024. Here's what can happen

Wall Street is in the spotlight with the 2024 forecasts: will the US stock exchange, the most monitored in the world by investors and analysts, surprise on the upside given the performance of this end of 2023? Some answers came from experts who managed to guess this year's predictions, standing out as the few to have estimated a stock rally in the midst of pessimistic projections on the performance of Wall Street.
At the beginning of 2023, in fact, the expectation was of further suffering on the stock market after the disaster of 2022.
A year ago, analysts of a certain caliber and carefully observed such as Marko Kolanovic of JPMorgan Chase & Co.
and Mike Wilson of Morgan Stanley argued that higher interest rates and an eventual economic recession would trigger major losses.
However, some strategists were immediately bullish and today they can say they were right.
They themselves have expressed predictions for Wall Street in 2024, thus outlining 5 possible scenarios for the US stock market.
read also Bond market towards 2024: what to expect in Europe? 1.
S&P 500 above 5,000 points With a target of 4,750 points in early 2023, Fundstrat co-founder and head of research Tom Lee came closest to predicting the S&P 500's trajectory among strategists tracked by Bloomberg .
His analysis had shown that the possibility of a 20% rally was double after the index's 19% collapse in 2022.
Three main factors underpinned his winning prediction: inflation would fall faster than expected ; companies were prepared to handle higher rates, given the Fed's warnings; volatility would have been very high.
“It's impossible for markets to stay at that level of anxiety, and when inflation declines – which is what has happened – then stocks actually levitate because the selling pressure is running out,” he said.
Lee remains among the most bullish market strategists for next year, with an S&P 500 target of 5,200.
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The Forecast 2.
Resilient Economy and S&P 500 Boost Earlier this year, Belski, the chief investment strategist at BMO Capital Market, had a target of 4,300 for the U.S.
stock benchmark.
This was one of the most bullish forecasts among analysts tracked by Bloomberg, before he and others improved their forecasts even further later in the year.
He believed market sentiment was overly negative at the end of 2022, which he said would spur demand for liquidity-driven and “opportunistically oversold” assets.
“Stocks drive earnings, which drive the economy, and it's absolutely ridiculous when I hear people say 'I'll wait, the recession will tell us when to buy stocks.' No, he won't.
Stocks tell you when we will have a recession,” according to the strategist.
For 2024, Belski expects a resilient labor market, easing consumer price pressures and rate cuts in the second half of the year, pushing the S&P 500 to 5,100.
3.
S&P 500 at 5,200 points Looking ahead to 2023, Stoltzfus, Oppenheimer's chief investment strategist, predicted the S&P 500 would close at 4,400 points.
At the time, his call was one of the most optimistic around.
He said downward inflation supported sentiment, and while bears deemed the earnings estimates too optimistic, he called them “the right size.” “Markets became heavily oversold in the sell-off that occurred in 2022,” he said.
Bear markets are always oversold and after recognizing this you get some sort of rally.
Stoltzfus remains optimistic, predicting that the S&P 500 will reach 5,200 points before the end of 2024.
read also Stocks, January 2024 forecast: will it be a month of declines? 4.
Soft landing in the US Bank of America's Savita Subramanian expressed a bullish view on 2023 stocks at mid-year.
“It seemed like a difficult message to convey to customers that of optimism,” he said.
After the regional banking turmoil, “there was a feeling that this was the beginning of the end and that everything would be like 2008.” Subramanian remains bullish for 2024, with a target of 5,000.
A soft landing and businesses and consumers adjusting to higher rates are seen as its biggest boosts for stocks.
5.
Small and mid caps among the winners of 2024 Carson Group strategist Detrick expected that the US economy would avoid a recession this year and had also bet that inflation would calm down sooner than the market expected.
The expert increased exposure to stocks during the banking turmoil in March and when the S&P 500 index collapsed in October.
“The March sell-off was pretty scary,” Detrick said.
“But we assessed that it was just a few bad actors and that it would not be systemic.” The strategist doesn't expect a recession next year either, and expects some of this year's laggards – rather than the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks – to fuel double-digit stock returns.
“Small cap, mid cap and financials: these are our three favorites.”