SPY
The ceiling just got higher
Wall Street is doing that thing where it keeps raising the bar while the high jumper is still in midair. In the last 72 hours, Yardeni Research, RBC Capital Markets, and HSBC all bumped up their S&P 500 targets, and Yardeni’s Ed Yardeni grabbed the loudest megaphone by lifting his year-end call to 8,250.
That’s not a typo. It’s now the highest published target on the Street, sitting about 11.5% above Friday’s record close. Translation: the bulls are basically saying, “Yes, the market is expensive-ish. No, we’re not done here.”
The bull case: earnings are doing the heavy lifting
Yardeni’s pitch is pretty simple: earnings are moving up so fast that the market is getting dragged higher behind them like a shopping cart with a busted wheel.
He called the move an “earnings-led meltup,” which is finance-speak for: companies keep printing better numbers, so investors keep paying up.
- Yardeni raised his year-end target from 7,700 to 8,250.
- RBC moved its target to 7,900 from 7,750.
- HSBC nudged its year-end 2026 target to 7,650 from 7,500.
But there’s a catch, because there’s always a catch
RBC’s Lori Calvasina basically split the market into two camps: the AI winners and everybody else trying to keep up. HSBC said the same thing in softer language, warning that the rally still looks narrow.
That matters because when a handful of giant names do the heavy lifting, the index can look healthier than the average stock underneath it. It’s a little like a group project where one person did the whole thing and everyone still gets an A.
Big picture: the Street is getting more optimistic, but investors still need breadth — not just a few mega-cap superheroes — if this rally is going to keep its swagger.