After a brutal 2022, the stock market’s bulls are on parade this year. Booming “magnificent seven” tech giants and enthusiasm over A.I. have helped the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite soar 18% and 37%, respectively, year to date. And with inflation fading and the labor market proving its resilience in the face of aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, Ed Yardeni, veteran market watcher and founder of Yardeni Research, believes a soft landing and more market gains are now inevitable.
“We see the bull market that started on October 12, 2022, continuing through at least the end of next year with the S&P 500 reaching a new record high somewhere between 4,800 and 5,400 over the next 18 months,” he wrote in a Sunday note.
