This is one of my favorite posts to write every year as we get to look back on Wall Street predictions and see how they panned out. We have done this in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 so it is becoming a tradition to see which strategists did well and which missed the mark.

Last year, the strategists predicted a bull market for 2017 with an average target of +5% for the S&P 500. Needless to say, they badly missed the mark as the S&P 500 has returned over 20% and blew all predictions out of the water. The most bullish was John Stoltzfus but his target was for just 2450 and today the S&P is 2682. The worst miss was the surprisingly bearish Tom Lee who historically was the most bullish on the street almost year in and year out — he picked a bad year to lose his bullish mojo. He expected the market to have a bad first half and basically end flat at 2275. Now let’s take a look at their thoughts on 2018…

Predictions for 2018

After looking at all the Wall Street reports, here are the targets from 13 strategists. This year we five new strategists on the list so it should be interesting to see how good they are. Unfortunately two of the most accurate from previous years, David Bianco from Deutsche Bank and Jonathan Glionna from Barclays, have changed jobs and no longer are on the poll.

The good news is that expectations are for the bull market to continue. For 2018, the average price target for the S&P 500 is 2848 or a 6.2% return. Three strategists are expecting another year of double-digit gains while two are forecasting a flat year when you add in dividends.

Let’s take a look at the forecasts and I’ve also included their predictions from last year so you can see if they are bullish or even more bullish. Note that the Runnymede investment team will discuss our outlook on 2018 on our quarterly webcast in the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in attending, please email us at [email protected].