Oppenheimer lifts S&P 500 year-end target to Wall Street-high on trade optimism
Its current target implies an 11.13% upside to the benchmark index's last close of 6,388.64. Oppenheimer previously set a target of 5,950 for the index.
"With the announcement of trade deals (Japan, EU) by President Trump... we believe that enough 'tariff hurdles' have been overcome for now," Oppenheimer strategists led by John Stoltzfus said in a note.
The U.S. and European Union finalised a trade deal on Sunday, that sets a 15% tariff on most European goods including cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, while the EU pledged to buy $750 billion in U.S. energy and invest $600 billion in the U.S. economy.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump struck a $550 billion deal with Japan.
Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and RBC Capital Markets also raised their S&P 500 targets
The S&P 500 has rebounded 28.2% since its April 8 low, following Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs, broadly driven by cyclical sectors such as technology, industrials and communication services.
Oppenheimer brought back its S&P 500 earnings estimate to $275, which it had originally set in December 2024, having trimmed its projection to $265 in April.
Stoltzfus continues to favor U.S. equities, particularly cyclical stocks, and sees further upside as inflation moderates and expects the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady in this week's policy meeting.
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The Independent
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A look at colleges with federal money targeted by the Trump administration
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY The White House announced in April that it froze more than $1 billion of Cornell's federal funding as it investigated allegations of civil rights violations. The Ivy League school was among a group of more than 60 universities that received a letter from the Education Department on March 10 urging them to take steps to protect Jewish students or else face 'potential enforcement actions.' NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Like Cornell, Northwestern saw a halt in some of its federal funding in April. The amount was about $790 million, according to the administration. DUKE UNIVERSITY The administration this week froze $108 million in federal money for Duke. The hold on funding from the National Institutes of Health came days after the departments of Health and Human Services and Education sent a joint letter alleging racial preferences in Duke's hiring and admissions. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Dozens of research grants were suspended at Princeton without a clear rationale, according to an April 1 campus message from the university's president, Christopher Eisgruber. The grants came from federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
The Independent
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154,000 federal workers who took DOGE buyouts are being paid to go fishing, watch Dungeons and Dragons streams and hunt for new jobs
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The Independent
27 minutes ago
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Airlines are now adopting personalized pricing. Here's how to avoid it
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Specifically, I'm worried that AI pricing models lack transparency and could unfairly take advantage of financially unsophisticated people. The history of custom pricing For much of history, customized pricing was the normal way things happened. In the past, business owners sized up each customer and then bargained face-to-face. The price paid depended on the buyer's and seller's bargaining skills – and desperation. An old joke illustrates this process. Once, a very rich man was riding in his carriage at breakfast time. Hungry, he told his driver to stop at the next restaurant. He went inside, ordered some eggs and asked for the bill. When the owner handed him the check, the rich man was shocked at the price. 'Are eggs rare in this neighborhood?' he asked. 'No,' the owner said. 'Eggs are plentiful, but very rich men are quite rare.' Custom pricing through bargaining still exists in some industries. For example, car dealerships often negotiate a different price for each vehicle they sell. Economists refer to this as 'first-degree' or 'perfect' price discrimination, which is 'perfect' from the seller's perspective because it allows them to charge each customer the maximum amount they're willing to pay. Currently, most American shoppers don't bargain but instead see set prices. Many scholars trace the rise of set prices to John Wanamaker's Philadelphia department store, which opened in 1876. In his store, each item had a nonnegotiable price tag. These set prices made it simpler for customers to shop and became very popular. Why uniform pricing caught on Set prices have several advantages for businesses. For one thing, they allow stores to hire low-paid retail workers instead of employees who are experts in negotiation. Historically, they also made it easier for stores to decide how much to charge. Before the advent of AI pricing, many companies determined prices using a 'cost-plus' rule. Cost-plus means a business adds a fixed percentage or markup to an item's cost. The markup is the percentage added to a product's cost that covers a company's profits and overhead. The big-box retailer Costco still uses this rule. It determines prices by adding a roughly 15% maximum markup to each item on the warehouse floor. If something costs Costco $100, they sell it for about $115. The problem with cost-plus is that it treats all items the same. For example, Costco sells wine in many stores. People buying expensive Champagne typically are willing to pay a much higher markup than customers purchasing inexpensive boxed wine. Using AI gets around this problem by letting a computer determine the optimal markup item by item. What personalized pricing means for shoppers AI needs a lot of data to operate effectively. The shift from cash to electronic payments has enabled businesses to collect what's been called a 'gold mine' of information. For example, Mastercard says its data lets companies 'determine optimal pricing strategies.' So much information is collected when you pay electronically that in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued civil subpoenas to Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase and other financial companies demanding to know 'how artificial intelligence and other technological tools may allow companies to vary prices using data they collect about individual consumers' finances and shopping habits.' Experiments at the FTC show that AI programs can even collude among themselves to raise prices without human intervention. To prevent customized pricing, some states have laws requiring retailers to display a single price for each product for sale. Even with these laws, it's simple to do custom pricing by using targeted digital coupons, which vary each shopper's discount. How you can outsmart AI pricing There are ways to get around customized pricing. It all depends on denying AI programs data on past purchases and knowledge of who you are. First, when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, use paper money. Yes, good old-fashioned cash is private and leaves no data trail that follows you online. Second, once online, clear your cache. Your search history and cookies provide algorithms with extensive amounts of information. Many articles say the protective power of clearing your cache is an urban myth. However, this information was based on how airlines used to price tickets. Recent analysis by the FTC shows that the newest AI algorithms are changing prices based on this cached information. Third, many computer pricing algorithms look at your location, since location is a good proxy for income. I was once in Botswana and needed to buy a plane ticket. The price on my computer was about $200. Unfortunately, before booking, I was called away to dinner. After dinner, my computer showed the cost was $1,000 − five times higher. It turned out that after dinner, I used my university's VPN, which told the airline I was located in a rich American neighborhood. Before dinner, I was located in a poor African town. Shutting off the VPN reduced the price. Last, often to get a better price in face-to-face negotiations, you need to walk away. To do this online, put something in your basket and then wait before hitting purchase. I recently bought eyeglasses online. As a cash payer, I didn't have my credit card handy. It took five minutes to find it, and the delay caused the site to offer a large discount to complete the purchase. The computer revolution has created the ability to create custom products cheaply. The cashless society, combined with AI, is setting us up for customized prices. In a custom-pricing situation, seeing a high price doesn't mean something is higher quality. Instead, a high price simply means a business views the customer as willing to part with more money. Using cash more often can help defeat custom pricing. In my view, however, rapid advances in AI mean we need to start talking now about how prices are determined, before customized pricing takes over completely.
