WE MADE SOME GOOD MARKET CALLS; OUR STOCK PICKS WERE MIXED

If we had just stuck to our guns, our 2025 Investing Outlook, published in the January 2025 issue, would have been close to spot-on.

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We said the S&P 500 could reach 6600, and it closed on October 31 at 6840, not that far off, returning 21.5% in the year since we published. The only problem is, we lowered our target in our July Midyear Outlook, which went to press just after the market troughed in a spring swoon that shaved nearly 19% off the S&P 500, not including dividends. We lost our nerve—like most of Wall Street's professional strategists—and lowered our forecast to between 5800 and 6000. At the midpoint, 5900, that's more than 900 points off the October 31 close.