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One of Wall Street’s biggest bulls is dialing back expectations. Evercore ISI’s Julian Emanuel cut his year-end target for the S&P 500 to 5,600 from a previously optimistic 6,800, citing rising risks of stagflation and economic downturn as the U.S. trade agenda stokes global volatility.
S&P 500 fell as much as 6% on Friday to close at 5,074.08.
“The prolonged uncertainty has raised asset volatility, damaged confidence and increased the odds ‘soft’ data eventually ‘infects’ the ‘hard,’ causing Stagflation or outright Recession,” Emanuel wrote in a Sunday note to clients.
While the new target still implies a roughly 10% gain from Friday’s close, the downgrade marks a sharp shift in tone from one of the Street’s more bullish strategists.
Emanuel also revised his 2025 S&P 500 EPS forecast down to $255 from $263 and lowered his forward price-to-earnings ratio assumption to 20.6 from 23.7.
His comments reflected growing concern over the scale and speed of the Trump administration’s tariff push.
“Remaking 80 years of economic, geopolitical and domestic governmental order, post WWII bedrocks – in 80 days – is messy business,” he said. “Doing it with the ‘sledgehammer’ of a larger Tariff than 1930’s Smoot-Hawley, was bound to cause Turmoil.”
Evercore’s downgrade follows similar moves by Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), UBS, and RBC, all of whom cut their S&P 500 targets last week.