What are analysts saying about stocks?

Goldman Sachs: “Markets continued to weigh a strong January jobs report against signs that disinflation is well under way. The resilient labor market coupled with signs of improvement in business surveys led our economists to cut their subjective probability that the US economy will enter a recession in the next 12 months to 25% from 35%. Similarly, the improvement in macro data led us to lift our 3-month S&P 500 target to 4000 (from 3600) last week.”
JPMorgan: “We believe that the equity rally that started last October, and that we hoped would be driven by peaking bond yields/CPI, China reopening, and the fall in European gas prices, is unlikely to get the fundamental confirmation for the next leg higher as the year progresses. Once the positioning recovers, Q1 is in our view likely to mark the high point of the market. With this in mind, we think that one should be using the ytd gains in order to cut equity allocation, and to reduce the beta of a portfolio, taking advantage of the very weak Defensives performance since last summer.”
Morgan Stanley: “Price action is not reflective of the deteriorating fundamentals or the fact that the Fed is hiking during an earnings recession —drivers that should ultimately determine the lows for this bear market later this spring… With equity markets showing some real signs of exhaustion last week, we think the risk-reward is as poor as it's been at any time during this bear market.”
Vital Knowledge: “The SPX is still in 'do nothing' territory (the index becomes more appealing below 4050).”
BTIG: “Coming into this year we thought one of the key themes would be market’s focus shifting from inflation and the Fed to a weakening economy. At this point that view looks to be premature with yields attempting to breakout, commodities resilient, and stocks breaking lower. We still expect the flip to occur before this cycle is done, but it might now be a back-half of ’23 story. This suggests that value likely outperforms growth, and after an 8% pullback the V/G ratio now appears quite timely.”
Citi: “We maintain our view that earnings resilience will be a theme of the current regime shift. However, a less negative earnings picture also implies less snap-back opportunity. A higher-for-longer Fed regime should limit valuation upside from here, thus keeping the S&P 500 in a trading range.”
Canaccord Genuity: “Equity markets are showing signs of stalling, consistent with a new intermediate-term (1-2 month) corrective phase taking hold. An intermediate-term corrective phase has downside potential to the December lows on most North American equity indices. We view this pullback is an opportunity to add exposure as equity markets have registered multi-week closes above their 40-week moving averages, which strongly suggests a new 4-Year cycle (cyclical bull market) is underway.” $Goldman Sachs (GS.US)$ $Citigroup (C.US)$ $JPMorgan (JPM.US)$ $Morgan Stanley (MS.US)$