Holy cow! All of the biggest bulls sharpened their horns and the biggest bears pulled out their claws this week.
Back in December, Wall Street's top strategists were timid and cautious when our stock market survey revealed a 2012 year-end consensus target of just 1,363 on the S&P 500.
However, many like Bank of America's Savita Subramanian have since lifted their price targets, while skeptics like Goldman's David Kostin continue to stand firm with their conservative targets.
This week, we heard from bulls like BlackRock's Bob Doll, Citi's Tobias Levkovich, and JP Morgan's Tom Lee. We also heard from high-profile bears like David Tice, David Rosenberg, SocGen's Albert Edwards, and Nomura's Bob Janjuah.
Oh baby, it was epic.
What follows are the highlights from this week's epic bull-bear battle.
BlackRock's Bob Doll was bullish, but his call had caveats
"It's all about Europe, if that left tail risk dissipates. At S&P 1550 stocks would still not be expensive…If Europe continues to heal and the Middle East doesn't blow up, 1550 is do-able."
Goldman's Jim O'Neill thought light trading volume could be bullish for stocks
"While many bears cite the lack of daily trading volume as a sign that the market lacks real conviction about these positive signs, it can also be argued that this reflects just how many investors have abandoned the equity culture and can still return."
John Hussman disagreed with the bulls, arguing the Bollinger band is signaling bad news
"As of Friday, the S&P 500 was within 1% of its upper Bollinger band at virtually every horizon, including daily, weekly and monthly bands. The last time the S&P 500 reached a similar extreme was Friday April 29, 2011, when I titled the following Monday's comment Extreme Conditions and Typical Outcomes .
...As it happened, April 29, 2011 turned out to mark the exact high of the S&P 500 for the year, and was followed by a steep intermediate market plunge."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
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