Have the markets reached the exuberant stage? Bullish sentiment has been the order of the day for a while, and the S&P 500 currently sits at 4,455, reflecting year-to-date gains of 16%.
By now, the index has already surpassed the year-end target of 4,400 set by Raymond James’ chief investment officer, Larry Adam. This achievement serves as a bit of vindication for Adam. He went against the prevailing sentiment at the start of the year, which, if you recall, was decidedly bearish due to the downbeat environment of 2022. Despite that, Adam maintained a positive outlook. Now, as everyone jumps back on the bull bandwagon and relative strength indicators enter ‘overbought territory,’ Adam believes it’s time to play the contrarian once again.
“These technical indicators, combined with other Wall Street firms rushing to lift their year-end S&P 500 price targets in recent weeks, indicated that much of the good news had been priced in – suggesting the market had entered into a more vulnerable position, susceptible to disappointment,” he explained.
Don’t get too alarmed, though, because Adam’s caution is reserved purely for the near-term. “Longer term,” he goes on to say, “we remain optimistic and expect the S&P 500 will grind higher over the next twelve months to at least 4,600 as macro tailwinds (i.e., the Fed concludes its tightening cycle, declining interest rates, resilient margins, and record cash on the sidelines) provide a more supportive backdrop for equities.”
Meanwhile, Raymond James analysts have been busy pointing out to investors the stocks primed to push ahead over the coming year, and they have tagged two names they see as ‘Strong Buys.’ We ran these tickers through the TipRanks database to find out what the rest of Wall Street’s analyst corps think about them. Let’s check the details.
EngageSmart, Inc. (ESMT)
We’ll start with EngageSmart, a company specializing in providing customized customer engagement software and integrated payment solutions. With a customer base of over 3,000 enterprises and 108,000 health and…
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