Evercore’s Weather Forecast Goes From “Stock Market Tornado” to “AI Rainbow” in 30 Days Flat

Listen, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I’m about to start pushing one: most Wall Street analysts are secretly moonlighting as your local weatherman. Think about it… they’re wrong more than half the time, always hedging, and they flip-flop more than a politician in an election year. And if we’re handing out awards for inconsistency, Evercore ISI is 100% getting one.

I mean seriously, not more than a month ago… Julian Emanuel, their chief strategist, was warning that the S&P could fall as much as 15%. He pointed to sticky inflation, the Fed keeping rates “higher for longer,” and policy uncertainty around tariffs. In his words, the setup looked like trouble, and he suggested the market was vulnerable to a pullback that could erase months of gains. Totally reasonable arguments, and at the time it actually made sense… markets had rallied hard, earnings looked kinda scary, and a pullback wouldn’t have shocked anyone. Fine, call noted.

But now, barely a month later, Emanuel is out here singing a totally different tune. In his latest note, he awarded a 7,750 price target on the S&P 500 for the end of 2026. That’s a 20% climb from current levels. His reasoning this time? AI. He literally wrote that artificial intelligence is “bigger than the Internet” and is about to launch stocks, valuations, and society itself to “new heights.” So in one breath it was “brace for impact,” and in the next it’s “AI will save us all, so remortgage your house and dump it into tech ETFs.”

(Source: Economic Times)

This is where my eyebrows start doing cartwheels. Because, yes, AI has been the engine under the hood of this year’s rally. Nvidia has exploded 770% since the start of 2023… Meta’s up 23% year-to-date. And OpenAI backer, Microsoft keeps hitting fresh highs. And Q2 earnings? Well they were way better than anyone dared to predict. We’re talking double-digit growth, big surprises across multiple sectors, and companies flexing real resilience despite all the noise about tariffs and the Fed. At this point, you could make a solid case that this actually isn't hype… it’s already showing up in the hard numbers.

But when analysts flip-flop this hard, it’s impossible to take them seriously. One month Evercore’s telling you to prep for a 15% crash, the next they’re calling for a 20% rocket ride. That isn’t research… it’s hedging bets. If stocks tank, they’ll pull out the bearish note. If the rally keeps ripping, they’ll wave around the bullish one. Either way, they get to play the genius card while retail investors are left dizzy, wondering whether to panic-sell or YOLO into call options.

Smacking a 7,750 target on the S&P by the end of next year is ballsy. That would make Evercore the most bullish shop on the Street, ahead of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, or even the permabulls at Fundstrat. For reference, the index is sitting around 6,400 (ish) right now. To hit 7,750 by late 2026, we’d need AI earnings growth to stay hot, multiples to expand even further, and no serious macro issues along the way. That’s not impossible… but it does require threading a very narrow needle.

Personally, I think this is a classic case of Wall Street analysts chasing the narrative of the moment. Two months ago, inflation fears were the clickbait. Today, it’s “AI to the moon.” Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe they’ll tell us aliens are the next catalyst for GDP growth.

Here’s what I’m getting at. Markets are unpredictable in the short term, always have been… always will be. But that doesn’t mean you should treat them like a roulette wheel. The educated bet isn’t chasing every crash headline or piling in just because someone typed “AI” on a research note… it’s recognizing where the earnings strength actually is and sticking with companies that have balance sheets and cash flow to weather storms. Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft…. love them or hate them, the results are on paper. That’s where investors should be looking, not at whichever narrative Wall Street is hyping this month.

So will we actually see 7,750 on the S&P by 2026? Who knows? The path is possible, but it requires a lot of things going right… earnings staying hot, multiples expanding, and zero macro curveballs. That’s threading a very thin needle. Which is why I don’t buy into the doomsday warnings or the utopia forecasts. The smarter play is to block out the noise, pay attention to the data, and avoid getting sucked into the “market’s about to crash” hysteria. Because if you’d listened to that back in 2023, you would’ve missed a historic rally that was literally staring you in the face.

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