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Wall Street's 2025 stock forecasts are coming, and two calls in particular stand out in our rankings.
In a sea of satisfyingly round numbers with lots of zeros, we have a 7,007 from Wells Fargo and a call of 6,666 from the Bank of America team.
On the one hand, these numbers seem ridiculous, suggesting impossible precision in stock market forecasting (of all things!).
But in places like our Chart of the Week, the ranking of projections from the strategists we follow, these numbers convey something essential about the often misunderstood plans that Wall Street likes to call.
At RBC, Lori Calvasina and her team wrote that their goal of 6,600 people by the end of 2025 “should be seen as a compass rather than a GPS.” The end result is simply “a construct that helps determine whether we think stocks will rise and why.”
These companies hope that customers – who pay for Calvasina's research and ideas – will read the entire PDF. But in many cases, the character is quickly uprooted from its place of origin, ending up in places like our Chart of the Week or mentioned in conversation.
But while Calvasina's nuance appears in the discussion, Wells Fargo's 7,007 targets and Bank of America's 6,666 targets actually manage to convey some of that context in the absurdity of precision (and even 'humor). A reminder that something more is happening here.
In a way, these numbers tell you how to interpret them: as a base case, as a guideline, as a range, as an expression of a best estimate. Even though ending in a zero – or two, usually – is the generally accepted scientific way of showing increased uncertainty.
And to be fair to Wells and BofA, there East a real justification behind the numbers.
“In simplest terms, forwarding the current EPS valuation of 22x 2025E to 2026E suggests that in a year, SPX would be around 7,000 ($318.50 per EPS at 22x = 7,007),” wrote l Wells team.
But they left that extra “7” to make things a little lighter. Or, as they say, “for lucky palindrome and James Bond aficionados.”
At BofA, Savita Subramanian and co. noted a reference to the stock market's post-crisis low – 666 – in calling for a full 6,000-point rally to be achieved 16 years later.
These “fun” screenings, it should be noted, have a precedent.
In 2014, Dan Greenhaus of BTIG used a Britney Spears song describing her view of the stock market in 2015. The same year, Oppenheimer John Stoltzfus called for the S&P 500 to finish at 2,311a prime number, although he played it straight.
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