Oracles of Wall Street: The top calls for 2026 from last year's most accurate market forecasters

Tariffs, delayed rate cuts, a shaky job market, more tariffs, new AI chatbots, debates over GPU depreciation timelines, dollar debasement, and even more tariffs.

It was yet another blockbuster year in markets.

Who saw things most lucidly amid all the chaos and posturing? Behold, our 2025 Oracles of Wall Street list.

In this year's edition, we highlight three main market trends for which we could find forecasters who stood out above their peers: the S&P 500's 17% rally; the market's bottom after the "Liberation Day" tariffs announcement sent stocks into a downward spiral; and gold's more-than-60% surge.

Of course, no list can be exhaustive — there were plenty of impressive calls this year that go unmentioned here. But below, we aim to call attention to predictions we think are particularly noteworthy for their accuracy, and in some cases for going against consensus at the time.

We've also added the flourish of forward-looking investing recommendations from these individuals, whose calls each proved to be prescient in 2025.

Let's start with our top stock-market forecasters.

S&P 500 upside

After a 23% gain in 2024, it was a bumpy ride for the S&P 500 in 2025. The release of DeepSeek's chatbot in January, followed by President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement in April, sent the index plummeting 19%. Bears appeared to be vindicated following a ferocious two-year rally, but in the end, the bulls won out. The index closed out the year around 6,900 — a 17% return.

Most Wall Street strategists were bullish coming into 2025. But a couple were closest with their price targets.

Manish Kabra, chief US equity strategist at Société Générale

Société Générale's Manish Kabra was one strategist who nailed the S&P 500's returns this year. Coming into 2025, he had a 6,750 price target on the index, as he believed Trump's deregulatory and low-tax policies would be good for growth in the US.

Kabra has a 7,300 price target for the S&P 500 in 2026, and is bullish on consumer cyclical, financials, and industrials stocks that should benefit from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

"My biggest call, which is unchanged from what I had in 2025, is you want to buy America first," Kabra told Business Insider. "It's about re-industrializing the US and everything that comes around it."

Nicholas Colas, cofounder of DataTrek

Colas came in with a nearly-spot-on price target of 6,840, betting that the US economy would remain resilient.

"The most important issue for anyone invested in the US equity market is the stability of the US economy in 2025," Colas said in late 2024. "Simply put, one must be very sure there will not be a downturn next year. Our view is consistent with that belief. Nothing about the current economy suggests we are at a precipice."

Colas has not issued a price target for 2026, but has said materials, real-estate, and utilities could be set to outperform in the new year.

Liberation Day bottom

After President Trump's April 2 announcement of remarkably high "reciprocal" tariffs for most countries around the world, stocks were in free-fall. The S&P 500 fell 12% in the span of a few days as investors panicked about the

But a few strategists kept a level head, and told investors right around April 9 that the bottom was likely in.

David Sekera, chief market strategist at Morningstar

Sekera saw the market as fully valued coming into 2025, so when prices started tanking from February to April, it started looking like a attractive buying opportunity, he said.

"Once the market hit kind of those levels where we're now talking a 20% discount to fair value, if you look at a longer-term chart of our price-to-fair value metric, that's typically a pretty good time to start moving into an overweight position," Sekera told Business Insider.

In a report on April 9, a day after the market bottom, Sekera encouraged investors to start buying.

"We think valuations have fallen enough for investors to begin to move into a small, tactical overweight position," he wrote.

The S&P 500 then rocketed up 10% that day, and is up 38% since.

Looking into 2026, Sekera said to keep an eye on AI beneficiary companies instead of AI buildout firms.

"2026 is probably the year that more of the market starts to shift their focus away from the AI hardware companies and look for those companies that are going to be able to drive top-line growth, be able to drive efficiencies as they utilize AI in their own products and services," Sekera said.

Some example companies he listed include: Clorox, Mondelez, ServiceNow, and Kraft Heinz.

Marko Papic, chief strategist at BCA Research

Before Trump even announced his April 2 tariff plans, BCA Research's Marko Papic predicted that the president would back off from his proposals, and timed it right.

Papic spoke with Business Insider on March 13 as investors were digesting Trump's tariff impositions on Canada, China, and Mexico, and said that a 15%-20% drop in the S&P 500 would spark a policy reversal.

"For sure he's going to care about the stock market because he's going to lose political capital if the economy goes into recession or if households feel poor," Papic said. "There's absolutely no way he's impervious to that."

Papic told Business Insider that his top calls for next year are that international stocks will continue to outperform, and that the US dollar index will fall another 10%.

Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group

Carson Group's Ryan Detrick went on CNBC before the market opened on April 9 — the day of the bottom — and brought a few facts with him to put the sell-off in historical context.

First, he highlighted that more than 80% of the stocks in the S&P 500 had made a 20-day low, on par with major lows historically. Second, the VIX had spiked above 50. And third, the market was exhibiting extreme degrees of intraday volatility, which had only been seen at the market lows in 2003 and 2015.

"We're in the ballpark here of a pretty significant tactical low," he told CNBC at the time.

In 2026, Detrick expects the economy to surprise to the upside despite some labor market weakness, and said he thinks the commodity boom is primed to continue.

"Overall, we like equities, yes. But we think having a little bit more commodity exposure relative to bond exposure —which has worked really well this year — we think that's a theme that can really continue next year," he told Business Insider.

Gold's speculative surge

After a 27% rally in 2024, a more-than-60% surge in the price of gold perhaps seemed unlikely.

But that's exactly what happened, as the precious metal's price reached as high as $4,552 an ounce.

Most Wall Street strategists had an upper bound of around $3,000 for gold in 2025, and gradually bumped up their targets throughout the year. But one forecaster stood above the rest.

Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of Doubleline Capital

That was DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach, who, as early as March, called for gold to surpass $4,000 an ounce and continued to double down on his forecast throughout the year as investors grew increasingly spooked about fiat currency debasement thanks to growing government debt.

"I think people are viewing gold as an asset class out of fear of the turmoil that's going on geopolitically, with the tariffs and everything else, and just the amount of debt that exists, that people wonder how we're going to deal with this," he told CNBC in May. "So gold is sort of the true monetary asset."

Looking ahead, Gundlach in November recommended a portfolio consisting of 20% cash, 25% bonds, 10-15% "real assets" such as gold, and 40% international stocks.

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