Dom Chu joins 'Money Movers' to discuss Wall Street's top strategists' 2026 targets.

New York

Wall Street's leading strategists anticipate continued growth for the S&P 500 through 2026, with a median year-end target of approximately 7,650, representing a 10-11% increase from current levels. The highest target comes from Oppenheimer at 8,100, while Bank of America projects the lowest at 7,100, but all surveyed expect positive returns.

Analysts also forecast an expansion in the S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio, with a median estimate of 25. Earnings per share projections for 2026 range from $296 to $356. Despite some caution about sector composition and possible multiple compression, no strategists foresee a decline, and even the lowest forecast suggests a modest gain.

Wall Street’s 2026 forecasts

So, where do Wall Street's top strategists think we're headed in 2026? Dom Chiu has been tracking all that. He has it for us. Hey, Dom. All right. So, Mike, Carl, so what's going to happen here is we are expecting another double-digit type return here for the S&P 500. We've slowly been ratcheting up those expectations over the last couple of months. So according to the CNBC market strategist survey, the year-end targets for at least the S&P 500 in 2026 come in with a median of just around 76.50. So call that roughly 10 to 11 percent higher than where we are right now for the S&P 500. Oppenheimer is at the street high with an 8,100 target price here. And Bank of America is the lowest strategist survey that we saw coming in at 7,100. All of them expect gains, but the median target price is about 10 percent higher, 11 percent from where we are right now. If you take a look at the moves in implied price-to-earnings multiples, John Stolzfus over at Oppenheimer has an implied P.E. target given his target at 26.5, roughly thereabouts. Seveda Subramanian at B of A comes at just a hair below 23, and the median comes in just about 25. Now, the interesting part about this is if you come in at just about 25 times earnings, you are now seeing some multiple expansion from where we currently are right now. As for the earnings per share targets, Mike Wilson at Morgan Stanley comes in with a high of about $356 in estimated earnings per share on a 12-month basis. The median level is at $308 for S&P 500 earnings. And the low is Julian Emanuel over at Evercore ISI, who forecasts about $296 worth of earnings per share in the S&P 500. But overall, if you take a look at all those factors together, what it equates to is a roughly 11 percent gain from here. So at least there is some incremental optimism that those same double-digit returns will repeat themselves, Carl, this time around as well. Don, pretty interesting. I was just thinking about the Seveda call, who does see earnings up 14 year on year, but is worried about some multiple compression, wealth effect, I think underweight consumer discretionary, overweight staples, right? And I think exactly. It's the composition of where she thinks the gains will be, and they're not necessarily in the largest weights in the index, and therefore it mutes your upside target. That being said, if the lowest target on the street is for a 3 or 4 percent gain, usually there's at least one bear out there or relative bear who says, hey, you know, dead money or down next year. We're not really getting that. And I would say last year, by the way, we were similar, projecting double-digit gains, but then the April sell-off got everybody to reduce their targets. So we had a reset. Yeah. There was some lingering bears in the course of this year, Stiefel, I think, is a good example, who kind of got burned and then a little bit less cautious on being cautious going into 26.

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