Barclays raised its year-end target for the benchmark S&P 500 index to 7,950 from 7,800 on Wednesday, following a standout earnings season led by technology companies.<\/p>\n
The revised target is about 3.6 percent higher than the index’s last close. The brokerage sees the benchmark reaching 8,800 points by the end of 2027.<\/p>\n
U.S. corporate earnings have outperformed Wall Street expectations in the second quarter; 86 percent of the 492 S&P 500 companies that have reported results exceeded analysts’ estimates, higher than the long-term average of 67.5 percent, according to data compiled by LSEG.<\/p>\n
Barclays said AI investment and healthy economic activity should support earnings momentum in the coming quarters.<\/p>\n
But the brokerage said it remains conservative on valuations because of doubts over the durability of the AI spending, resilient inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and a more hawkish rate outlook. The benchmark index has risen 12.1 percent this year despite the concerns.<\/p>\n
The brokerage also lifted its 2026 earnings-per-share forecast for the S&P 500 to US$365 (HK$2,847) from US$337.<\/p>\n
It downgraded the utilities sector to “neutral” from “positive,” citing regulatory uncertainties, including challenges around wildfire liability reform and growing opposition to data center permitting in some U.S. states.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, HSBC also raised its year-end target, betting that strong corporate earnings and sustained spending on AI infrastructure will extend the benchmark index’s rally.<\/p>\n
Expectations for the index remain bullish, with UBS Global Research, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup projecting the S&P 500 will end the year at or above 8,000.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barclays raised its year-end target for the benchmark S&P 500 index to 7,950 from 7,800 on Wednesday, following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21264],"tags":[3343,345,255,339,11,338,348,341,340,342,346,347,344,330,337,343],"class_list":["post-120802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barclays","tag-barclays","tag-breaking-news","tag-china","tag-english-daily","tag-finance","tag-free-newspaper","tag-headlines","tag-hong-kong-media","tag-hong-kong-news","tag-hong-kong-news-media","tag-latest-news","tag-sing-tao","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-the-standard","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117241475366125201","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}