JPMorgan chief equity strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas raised his year-end S&P 500 target to 7,200 on Friday from a prior 6,500 forecast, joining the more bullish camp on Wall Street alongside Tom Lee at Fundstrat and Mike Wilson at Morgan Stanley. The new target implies approximately 9% upside from Friday's close of 6,612 and would represent a 12.4% full-year gain for the benchmark.
The S&P 500 has now climbed 12.4% from its early-March low of 5,880, recovering all of the early-2026 correction and posting fresh all-time highs in eight of the past 12 trading sessions. Trading volumes remain healthy at 11.2 billion shares per day across U.S. exchanges, while the CBOE Volatility Index has retreated to 14.8 — the lowest level since November.
Earnings Revisions Turn Positive
The bull case rests heavily on the recent inflection in earnings-revision breadth, which turned positive in mid-April for the first time since June 2024 according to FactSet data. The revision ratio — analyst upgrades divided by total revisions — has climbed to 1.18, with 58% of S&P 500 companies seeing upward EPS revisions over the past four weeks. Technology, communications, and consumer-discretionary sectors are leading the revisions.
Bottom-up consensus EPS for 2026 has been lifted to $298 from $282 over the past month, while 2027 estimates have risen to $342 from $314. At Lakos-Bujas's 7,200 target, the implied forward multiple would be 21.0x — elevated by historical standards but justified, in his view, by the combination of declining interest rates, AI productivity tailwinds, and a robust corporate buyback environment.
Buyback Authorizations at Record
Q1 corporate buyback authorizations totaled $412 billion across the S&P 500, a fresh all-time record and a 24% increase from Q1 2025. Apple led with a $120 billion authorization announced at its earnings call, followed by Alphabet at $80 billion, Meta at $50 billion, and Bank of America at $25 billion. Total executed buybacks in Q1 reached $278 billion — the highest quarterly figure on record.
The strategist nonetheless cautioned that risks remain elevated, citing renewed geopolitical fragility in the Persian Gulf, the July expiration of the current tariff authority, and the potential for a Republican-Democratic stalemate over the FY2027 budget. The base-case 7,200 target assumes none of these tail risks materialize, while the bear-case scenario would see the index falling to 5,800 by year-end.