By Noel Randewich
(Reuters) -The S&P 500 benchmark U.S. inventory index will finish 2025 just under present near-record ranges, reflecting tempered optimism amid ongoing considerations over the financial influence of President Donald Trump’s international tariffs and uncertainty surrounding Federal Reserve charge cuts, in response to a brand new Reuters ballot.
Market strategists polled by Reuters confirmed that considerations about potential stagnation associated to tariffs have dampened optimism about Wall Avenue’s rally in AI heavyweights.
“I don’t anticipate the US coming into a recession; nevertheless, I do anticipate the economic system to expertise a slowdown,” mentioned Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio supervisor at Dakota Wealth. “Many employers lack visibility into future circumstances and are due to this fact delaying enlargement.”
The S&P 500 will finish 2025 at 6,300 factors, equal to a 2.3% dip from present ranges, in response to the median estimate of 35 strategists, analysts and portfolio managers polled August 7-19.
The S&P 500 ended Monday at 6,449.15 factors, down 0.3% from its document excessive shut on August 14.
High of thoughts for U.S. traders, the Fed is broadly anticipated to chop rates of interest at its September coverage assembly to assist financial progress, presumably adopted by one other discount by December.
Some 70% of worldwide traders surveyed by BofA World Analysis in early August mentioned they anticipate stagflation – the mixture of beneath development progress and above development inflation – within the subsequent 12 months.
The S&P 500 has climbed 9% thus far in 2025.
Strategists’ estimates have elevated since a Reuters inventory ballot in Might, once they anticipated the S&P 500 to finish 2025 at 5,900. However this week’s ballot forecast continues to be down from a Reuters ballot in February, once they focused the S&P 500 to finish the 12 months at 6,500.
Whereas strategists battle to foretell the inventory market, the most recent Reuters ballot affords a worthwhile glimpse of Wall Avenue’s cautious sentiment following current document features.
A sequence of offers with main U.S. buying and selling companions, together with extensions of the White Home’s self-imposed deadlines, has left traders much less jittery about Trump’s on-again off-again international commerce warfare than they had been when his April tariff bulletins despatched international markets right into a hunch.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq have climbed to document highs in 2025 largely on account of features in Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta Platforms and different AI heavyweights. On the identical time, S&P 500 sector indexes together with healthcare, shopper discretionary, vitality and actual property are practically unchanged for the 12 months.
