Why Goldman Expects The Most Flawless Fed Landing Ever: S&P 5,100 With GDP Double Consensus, Jobs, & Wage Growth ... Yet 5 Rate Cuts As Inflation Tumbles

Back on November 15, when the S&P was trading at 4500, Goldman's chief equity strategist David Kostin triumphantly published his 2024 US equity outlook and S&P price target, one which was supposed to leave an indelible mark on clients' memories not least because it borrowed a line from that ultimate symbol of repeatedly chasing 15 minutes of fame, Taylor Swift, but because - well - it was supposed to be right, damn it and as a strategist you are paid to predict the future, something which for Kostin meant barely any increase in the S&P500, which he saw ending 2024 at 4,700, a paltry 5% increase from where it was in mid-November.

The problem is that as regular readers may recall, one year earlier, Kostin's similar attempts to predict the future crashed and burned spectacularly, as his 2023 year-ahead forecast - which was published in November 2022 when the S&P was trading at 4,000 - projected zero change for the S&P500 which Kostin expected would close the year unchanged at 4000 as the "cost of money is no longer next to nothing" (hence the far more subdued report title "Paradise Lost"). In retrospect, it turns out the cost of money had exactly zero impact on where stocks would close the year (indicatively, Kostin's year-ahead forecasts from 2021, 2020 and so on, were just as terrible).