All roads lead to all-time highs for stocks now that a ceasefire between Iran and Israel is in place, according to JPMorgan’s trading desk. “Time to get bulled up, again,” the traders wrote. “With Israel/Iran seemingly defused, the market is resuming its march to/through all-time highs.” “With this geopolitical risk behind us, the Market is refocusing on the macro picture, preparing for earnings, and watching the looming deadline on the expiration of the tariff moratorium. We shift our view back to Tactically Bullish with the bullish hypothesis based on resilient macro data, positive EPS growth and thawing trade war rhetoric,” they added. The S & P 500 is about 2% below its record high of 6,144.15 that was set Feb. 19, as investors have shrugged off everything from geopolitical headwinds to the threat of higher tariffs. Several Wall Street strategists have hiked their year-end S & P 500 targets in recent weeks — after slashing them earlier in the year following the April tariff scare. Others are less sanguine. Stifel strategist Barry Bannister expects the S & P 500 to suffer a correction in the second half of 2025. “We think there’s going to be a consumer slowdown … As the consumers pull back, precautionary savings go up, consumption slows,” he told CNBC’s ” Squawk Box ” in an interview. “It’s going to prove that Big Tech is cyclical. They are exposed very much to the topline growth and to the consumer, and the consumer is going to take a little bit of a break here.” Elsewhere Tuesday morning on Wall Street, Wells Fargo said buy the dip in Visa and Mastercard . “We’re buyers of V/MA shares on the stablecoin weakness, as it is way overblown,” analyst Donald Fandetti wrote in a note to clients, adding that “there are many hurdles to this theoretical alternative to card payments.”
