Oppenheimer’s John Stoltzfus likes what he sees in the US, both in terms of the economy and equities. He’s also upbeat on prospective productivity gains from AI.

Stoltzfus is now the proud owner of the highest year-end 2025 S&P target on Wall Street, a whopping 7,100. If realized, that’d put the benchmark’s gain from the March 2020, pandemic panic lows at 215%. A 17% gain between now and New Year’s 2026 would also make for one helluva third-year encore after two straight years during which the S&P posted gains of better than 20%.

In his outlook, Stoltzfus cited “a number of factors including current stateside monetary policy, the resilience in economic growth, business activity, the consumer and job creation evidenced in recent years and the current year.” The implied multiple in Stoltzfus’s 2025 target is a nosebleed 25.8x on his aggregate index EPS estimate of $275.

The figure shows you a few of Wall Street’s year-end 2025 calls. Readers know how I feel about this by now: It’s meaningless. I present it purely for entertainment purposes. If you’re here to read summaries of sell-side equity strategy notes, I’ll oblige, but… well, again, it’s meaningless.

Stoltzfus offered a rationale for stocks that goes “beyond fear and greed.” There’s also “need,” he said, citing “increased private investor appetite across demographic groups for equities.” People have financial “responsibilities,” like funding retirements which “might be longer than previous generations with less contribution today going forward from social security and defined benefit retirement programs.” Further, parents have to provide for their children’s education and “invest for [the] family legacy.”

I don’t know what he means by “family legacy,” but I do know it’s exceedingly unfortunate that Americans have to migrate out the risk curve in their investments in order to fund a comfortable retirement and afford college for the kids. Ideally, the government would help out with such things in the richest nation the world’s ever known.

Anyway, Stoltzfus touted the many virtues of stocks for wealth-building and reminded investors that they can also be a hedge against inflation. (Don’t tell 2022.)

As for AI, it’s “a watershed point on the historic timeline of technology and economic progress,” Stoltzfus declared. In case that’s not Jensen Huang enough for you, he went on: AI “may parallel the automobile’s contribution to the economy from the 1920s,” when the pace of progress “deeply changed the way, where and how people lived.” (Until it all dead-ended in what, to this day, still counts as the single-worst economic downturn witnessed in modernity.)

Stoltzfus did add a few caveats. He’s not, the note read, “suggesting paradise on Earth,” and Oppenheimer doesn’t expect a “Goldilocks world.” Rather, they see “genuine potential for AI to provide greater efficiencies in key areas that are challenging progress today across the sectors and society.”

And as bullish as he is, John reminded investors that “trees don’t grow to the sky.” You wouldn’t know it from reading his 2025 outlook, though.