Not your average market cheerleader
Ed Yardeni basically looked at the market’s current victory lap and said, “Actually, maybe I still wasn’t bullish enough.” The veteran strategist is now penciling in an S&P 500 at 10,000 by the end of 2029, and he says the climb isn’t coming from meme-stock madness or some valuation fever dream. It’s coming from good old-fashioned corporate profits.
The bull case in plain English
Yardeni’s thesis is pretty simple: earnings are still doing the heavy lifting. He argues the market is in a kind of “earnings-led melt-up,” where companies keep delivering while skeptics keep waiting for gravity to show up and ruin the party.
A few of his big points:
- The U.S. consumer is still hanging tough, despite higher rates and all the usual doom-scroll material.
- Corporate earnings expectations remain sturdy, with Yardeni citing about 20% growth over the next seven quarters.
- The economy has absorbed geopolitical and macro chaos without face-planting.
Why investors should care
This matters because the market narrative is changing. If the rally is being powered by profits rather than pure hype, then the “this has to end soon” crowd has a tougher argument to make. That doesn’t mean stocks only go up from here — markets love a plot twist — but it does suggest the bull case is still very much alive.
And yes, the headline number is spicy: 10,000 on the S&P 500 sounds like something your group chat would mock on first read. But when one of Wall Street’s longtime optimists says the market may still have more room to run, people tend to listen.
Big picture: if Yardeni is right, this rally isn’t a sugar rush. It’s a longer meal.