While many investors wait anxiously for the Federal Reserve to announce the first interest rate cut since 2008 triggering a stock market frenzy upward, analysts at Goldman Sachs don’t think it will do much.
Chief U.S. Equity Strategist David Kostin thinks that most of the rise in the market is long in the past as the S&P 500 set a new all-time high record last week.
“A lot of that rise in the market, in my estimation, is already behind us,” Kostin said in a “Squawk on the Street” interview on CNBC. “90% of that rally has been about multiple expansion.”
Kostin argues that the lack of new information is the limiting factor to a rate cut pushing shares much higher.
“What new, incremental information are we going to get to push the market higher? The answer is, not a lot,” Kostin said.
The Fed is set to meet on July 30-31 to discuss the state of the U.S. economy and whether a rate cut is actually even needed. After last week’s strong jobs report that showed 224,000 new jobs added to the market in June, beating out many projections, many Fed board members eased their stance on cutting rates.
“If there was to be a shift from that direction, there’d have to be a lot of jawboning and speechmaking in the next several weeks,” Kostin said.
And investors may get their clues towards the Fed’s expectations during Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimonies before Congress on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Powell will meet with a House committee on Wednesday and a Senate panel on Thursday.
Kostin said Goldman is still predicting two rate cuts in 2019 citing the Fed’s adversity to going against what the market expects. He is also sticking with his 3,000 point price target for the S&P 500 by the end of the year which is right around the middle of the list of Wall Street analysts polled by the CNBC Market Strategist Survey.
The ongoing trade negotiations between the U.S. and China are another major global event that investors have their eyes on, and Kostin is no different. He said he could see the markets responding positively to a new trade deal between the world’s two largest economies, but Goldman does not expect that deal to happen any time soon.
