"Wall Street Oracle" remains bullish on US stocks: S&P 500 index expected to reach 5700 points this year

According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, recently maintained a bullish forecast for the US stock market. Despite acknowledging that the latest consumer inflation data has complicated the market outlook, this analyst, known as the "Wall Street Oracle," expects the S&P 500 index to reach 5700 points this year, ranking as the most optimistic S&P 500 index expectation on Wall Street, higher than the 5500 points expected by Bernstein, Wells Fargo, and Oppenheimer.

The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Core CPI for March released by the US government last Wednesday were higher than market expectations, highlighting the stickiness of US inflation in the first quarter of 2024. As a result, the rate futures market significantly reduced expectations of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve, leading to the S&P 500 index's worst weekly performance since October last year.

With three consecutive months of higher-than-expected inflation data continuing to highlight the resilience and stickiness of the US economy, rate futures market bets on a Fed rate cut dropped to as low as 25 basis points, far from the 150 basis points expected at the beginning of the year and the 75 basis points before the CPI announcement. The market now bets on the first rate cut being pushed back significantly from March to November, later than the market's initial bet of June before the CPI announcement. The 10-year US Treasury yield, known as the "global asset pricing anchor," briefly approached 4.6% last week.

"Wall Street Oracle" Tom Lee remains bullish on the US stock market! He sees the recent pullback as a good buying opportunity

However, Tom Lee seemed optimistic in an interview last Friday, calling the market's decline last week a "temporary painful moment and an opportunity to buy the S&P 500 index on dips."

It is known that Lee was one of the few bullish forces on Wall Street who successfully predicted the bullish trend of the S&P 500 index in the second half of last year, and he accurately predicted the uptrend of the US stock market in 2023 at the end of 2022. Lee predicted at the end of 2022 that the S&P 500 index would surge by over 20% to 4750 points in 2023, and the index unexpectedly soared in 2023, falling just over thirty points short of Lee's target.

"I think this narrative logic is very confusing because the CPI report is disappointing, but it is driven by what we call stubborn factors: housing, car insurance... The current year-over-year inflation rate of the median component of core CPI is only 1.7%. What I mean is that inflation is normalizing, it's just not very obvious overall at the moment," Lee said in an interview.

"What we need to see is the improvement progress of the CPI data in April and May, which is a future thing, and then let the Fed's expectations no longer hinder economic development. What we don't want to see is the Fed wanting to further slow down the economy," Lee said, adding that even if there is only one rate cut this year, it will still be a relatively good environment for the US stock marketDespite the recent pullback in the US stock market in April, the S&P 500 index is not far from reaching a new record level. However, most analysts and traders on Wall Street are still grappling with concerns about the overvaluation of tech stocks and the overall high price-to-earnings ratio.

Lee said in a media interview, "When someone looks back at the history of the past 20 years, they will make this argument." "If they compare the price-to-earnings ratio and interest rates over a span of 90 years, when the 10-year US Treasury yield is between 4% and 5% - which is a fairly wide range - the corresponding median price-to-earnings ratio is 20x. Therefore, the median price-to-earnings ratio we are currently at has not even reached the level when the 10-year US Treasury yield was in this range. If you look at the median of the stock market, it is actually around 16x."

"What I want to say is that there is room for yield to rise, but I think the price-to-earnings ratio can continue to expand. I don't think 5200 points is the upper limit for the US stock market this year. I know it's hard for investors to accept this, but I think the S&P 500 index may end the year around 5,600-5,700 points, or even higher," Lee added.

From 4625 points to 5535 points! Wells Fargo recently significantly raised its S&P 500 index expectations

Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat, has one of the most optimistic forecasts for the S&P 500 index on Wall Street. Earlier this year, Stephen Suttmeier, chief equity technical strategist at Bank of America, a major Wall Street bank, said that the S&P 500 index is highly likely to touch 5,600 points from a technical perspective.

Last week, another major Wall Street bank, Wells Fargo, raised its target price for the S&P 500 index from the previous 4625 points to 5535 points. In a note to clients, Wells Fargo cited the significant improvement in company performance and profit prospects brought about by artificial intelligence technology, as well as investors' longer time horizons and higher valuation thresholds, as upward catalysts.

"In our view, the bull market, the long-term growth story of artificial intelligence, and the concentration of the index have shifted investors' focus from traditional valuation metrics to long-term growth and discounting metrics. Since the end of 2022, investors' valuation thresholds seem to be decreasing while the time horizon is increasing, and this is where this optimism is taking effect," the Wells Fargo strategist team statedThe benchmark index S&P 500 closed at 5123.41 points last Friday, with a weekly decline of 1.56%, but has risen nearly 8% so far this year