A brief guide to digesting outlook reports highlighting year-end stock market targets 📜

For starters, don't expect anyone to nail the number 🎯

Over the next several weeks, top Wall Street strategists will publish reports outlining their expectations for the stock market in 2026.

In keeping with tradition, many of these reports will come with a year-end price target for the S&P 500.

As I’ve written repeatedly, I’m not crazy about these price targets. It’s next to impossible to precisely predict where the markets will be at a single point in time in the near future.

Unless you have major financial decisions to make at the end of next year, these targets will offer limited value.

That said, I think the research and commentary that accompany these targets can be interesting and valuable to investors. I also think the inevitable discourse surrounding these targets presents an opportunity to discuss the behavior of markets, the analysts covering them, and the managers running the companies that underlie these stocks.

Here are five thoughts on processing these reports.