Back in March and April, Wall Street’s finest were out here yelling “SELL EVERYTHING!” like the stock market was a yard sale and Jay Powell had just hiked rates to 15% (ok, let’s not tempt him with a good time).

JPMorgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley (all the usual suspects) were practically handing out bear costumes with blood on them. A long-term recession was inevitable (so they said). Tariffs were going to send the entire economy back to 2008 (maybe even worse). Trump was going to spiral us into a trade war with the entire alphabet soup of global powers (EU, UK, JP, CN, you name it). If you so much as opened a Robinhood account, some analyst probably materialized behind you whispering, “You should really sell that and buy some gold…” Well, throw all that in the wastebin because that narrative completely fell apart.

The S&P 500 is back to printing all-time highs (seems like every day). Corporate earnings (one of the best gut checks for how the market’s really doing) are beating the tape across the board, with 84% of companies coming in ahead of expectations. And those tariffs everyone was stressing about? Turns out Trump’s been cutting trade deals behind closed doors like he’s flipping countries on Facebook Marketplace. (List it for $50, get offered $25, settle at $35, shake hands, move on.)

We’re talking Japan, the EU, Southeast Asia… all hopping on board before the Aug 1 deadline. Even China, the big bad dragon of the trade war saga, is expected to extend its tariff truce with the U.S. another three months. So yeah… not exactly the global implosion the doomsayers promised.

And now, would you look at that? Oppenheimer (the firm that’s made a habit of being right when everyone else is panicking) just made another huge call: They’re predicting the S&P 500 hits 7,100 by year-end. If you do the math, that’s an 11% gain from here… which would make 2023, 2024, and 2025 each 20%+ gain years. Let that sink in. Three straight years of 20%+ gains. That hasn’t happened since NSYNC was still together and Michael Jordan’s Bulls looked invincible… back when the only “AI” investors were worried about was AOL Instant Messenger going offline.

If this sounds like just another “analyst turns bullish during a rally” moment (like saying planes fly in the sky) it’s worth pointing out that Oppenheimer’s different. Chief Investment Strategist John Stoltzfus has built a reputation for showing up early and getting the big calls right. He called the V-shaped recovery in 2020 while most of Wall Street was bracing for soup lines. And in 2023, when Morgan Stanley was out here telling people to load up on gold bars and peanut butter, Stoltzfus stayed bullish… and ended up on the right side of the trade.

Now he’s back with his foot on the gas… lifting his S&P earnings target to $275 for 2025 (that’s 3% higher than the Street), implying we’re gonna finish the year strong on actual earnings growth. And yes, that does mean valuations are stretching (he’s modeling a P/E of 25.8x vs. the current 22.5x), but if earnings keep surprising to the upside (and they are) then this market’s still got room to run.

Meanwhile, the fearmongers from earlier this year… well, they’ve quietly stopped updating their end-of-year targets (weird how that works, huh?). The reality is, a lot of people missed this rally because they listened to the loudest voices in the room instead of the ones with actual receipts. And hey, I get it… fear sells. It always has. Panic makes headlines. "The market is going to crash" gets way more clicks than "steady earnings growth continues." But as we all know (when you zoom out) the market doesn’t reward anxiety, it rewards patience. It rewards companies that keep delivering. And it rewards the people who don’t jump ship every time Ray Dalio says the world’s about to end.

Oppenheimer’s not the type to chase headlines or fire off hot takes for engagement. They’ve been around for over 70 years quietly doing what actually moves the needle… digging into the numbers, trusting the research, and staying grounded while everyone else is either panic-selling or writing Twitter threads about the end of capitalism.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been saying the same thing since all the noise started… back when everyone was freaking out over tariffs, rate hikes, and whatever crisis-of-the-week cable news was pushing. I said buy the dip. Not because I like to sound contrarian, but because the numbers never backed up the doom-and-gloom takes. Sure, earnings stumbled a bit (that happens) but the reaction was way overdone, driven more by “what if” scenarios than actual fundamentals. The consumer was still spending, balance sheets looked fine, and underneath all the headlines, the market was telling a much more stable story.

Now here we are… trade deals are getting done, companies are beating earnings left and right, and the market is climbing right over every bearish headline it was supposed to collapse under. (Weird how that happens when you actually look at the fundamentals).

I’m not saying things didn’t feel shaky a few months ago (watching the market drop 5% in a week isn’t exactly relaxing) but let’s not act shocked if we finish 2025 with another 20% gain. The signs were there. This was never going to be some prolonged meltdown. We all knew Trump wasn’t about to tank the market forever. You just had to block out the noise long enough to see it. (Or, better yet, listen to the folks who were telling you to stay in while everyone else was bailing.)

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Robinhood and Meta as mentioned in the article.