Goldman Sachs: Strong earnings expected to drive further gains in global stocks

PANews October 12 news: Goldman Sachs Group strategists have turned bullish on the short-term outlook for global equities, believing that strong corporate earnings will drive stocks already near record highs even higher. The team led by Christian Mueller-Glissmann noted in a report that rising oil prices and bond yields have stalled the stock market rally, valuation pressures have eased somewhat, while the corporate earnings outlook remains solid. They upgraded equities to overweight from neutral for the next three months, in line with their bullish stance for the next 12 months.

Christian said: "Earnings growth continues to support the stock market, and the recent valuation pullback has improved the risk-reward setup heading into the third-quarter earnings season." Strategists at Wall Street institutions including Bank of America and Barclays have also recently become more optimistic about the U.S. stock market outlook, partly due to strong corporate earnings expectations. Bank of America strategist Subramanian has raised the year-end target for the S&P 500 to 7,400 points, and Barclays also raised its target due to resilient corporate earnings.