Review of 2008 Predictions a la Wall Street’s “Finest”
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 21:35As of 01/02/2008 the the year price target on the S&P 500 set by the Chief Investment Strategists at the major investment banks are as follows:
Strategist Year End Price Target
Citigroup 1675
HSBC 1700
Credit Suisse 1650
Bank of America 1625
UBS 1700
Morgan Stanley 1525
Bear Stearns 1700
Goldman Sachs 1675
JP Morgan 1590
Lehman Brothers 1630
Wachovia 1590
Merrill Lynch 1525
Average 1632
Average Assumed % Gain +11.2%
Actual (As of November 25) 857
Actual % Gain (- Loss) -40%
HSBC, Bear Stearns & UBS were the most optimistic in their outlook while Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch were relatively conservative. The fact remains that all of the brightest minds on wall street were way off.
The “Experts” turned out to be disastrously wrong in 2008.
ChartingStocks.net, however, had been warning it’s readers throughout all of 2007 of a coming market crash and economic depression.
In Jan 2007, we made the case for a coming stock market crash (The market peaked and began declining in October 2007).
We warned of techincal indicators which were turning negative. In February we warned about the Broker-Dealer stocks and singled out Bear Stearns ($165 at the time), Merrill Lynch ($88), Morgan Stanley ($78).
In March 2007, we cautioned that the US dollar was about to be sold off. We reiterated our cautious outlook on the financial companies such as American Express at $56, Citigroup at $50, Bank of America at $50.
In one of our final reports for the year, we publish a post title “Stocks to Sell Off in Weeks Ahead” in September 2007 and the market did, in fact, peak in the following weeks of October and has been sliding since.
Bottom line: As the great John Murphy says “Keep your eyes on the charts.”
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