The S&P 500 has had a good summer, even setting a record for perhaps its most important valuation metric. And now, with fall only a little more than a week away, a strategist is predicting the index will march even higher.
The gauge has since cooled to 18.7, but is still far above where it started the year and the average of the past two decades—16.8 and 15.76, respectively. Still, Manish Kabra of European bank Société Générale expects the S&P 500 to close out the year at 4750, a 6.5% gain from Tuesday’s market close of 4,461.90.
Kabra, who is head of U.S. Equity strategy for Société Générale, is pinning his projection primarily on the pullback or delay of recession forecasts. A more upbeat economic outlook in the coming few months would fuel investor optimism, despite a possible slowdown in the middle of next year, he wrote.