If you’re a sell-sider with responsibility for the official house S&P call, there’s really only one rule: Don’t be a stubborn bear in a bull market.

That’s not an especially big ask, particularly from people who make $500,000 or more per year. For some egos, though, it’s too much. The thing about crash calls is that if you’re right, you’re a legend. For the rest of your career, you’re “Man (woman) who called stock crash” for the purposes of mainstream financial media headlines. It doesn’t matter how many times you’re wrong going forward. One correct index-level crash call is all the cachet you’ll ever need. You might even be able to parlay it into a career on the buy-side burning up other people’s money on crash protection premiums.

I understand (all too well) the allure of being “Man who called stock crash.” What I don’t understand is why you’d risk a cushy job in a Wall Street research department trying to be that man. If you’re a company guy, just be a company guy. You’re getting paid seven times (or more) the median household income plus a bonus, benefits, stock options and health coverage to forecast 9% annual returns for US equities. That’s a pretty sweet gig. So, just do that. Leave being a hero to the heroes.

Everyone knows it’s more or less impossible to accurately forecast stock benchmarks, and that the only thing anyone can say with anything approaching confidence is that odds are, and everything else equal, stocks will be higher a year from now. Because that’s what a century of precedent tells us. So, all that’s expected of you as “chief equity strategist” at a major bank is that you respect that precedent by erring on the side of bullishness unless there’s a very, very good reason not to. Like, say, a pandemic.

One guy who gets all of this is Goldman’s David Kostin. You’re not going to catch David overstaying his welcome in an overtly bearish forecast for the S&P. Not when Goldman’s “sterling” reputation’s on the line. That’s not to say Kostin’s always Wall Street’s top bull. Usually he’s not. But he’s rarely going to be out on a limb calling for a meaningful decline because, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, David likes and appreciates his job. You won’t be fired for forecasting 7% S&P upside over the next 12 months. I don’t care if the S&P falls 80% over that period, you did your job.

It’s with that in mind that Kostin changed his year-end 2025 S&P forecast for the fourth time since issuing it in November. In a new note, he lifted his six-month target to SPX 6600, or 6% upside from current levels citing “earlier and deeper Fed easing and lower bond yields than we previously expected, continued fundamental strength of the largest stocks and investors’ willingness to look through likely near-term earnings weakness.”

Note that Kostin’s original year-end 2025 call was SPX 6700. It went as low as 5700 just before “Liberation Day.” Now it’s basically back to where it started. Call that absurd if you like, but I’d call it prudent: This is an occupation which allows, indeed encourages, you to mark your forecasts to market. Only a fool would forgo that luxury.

Have a look at the figure on the right, above. It’s classic Kostin. For now, he’s more bullish than most, but not so bullish that he’ll stay out-of-consensus in the (likely) event that other house calls are revised up to reflect the rally back to all-time highs. That is: Assuming things don’t go off the rails again on the tariff front, the median in the distribution shown in Exhibit 2 will shift rightward, making Kostin’s call look i) early and ii) not Pollyannaish.

This isn’t hard, folks. Really it isn’t. Kostin raised his forecast quicker than most on the Street in light of relatively (note the emphasis) constructive news on the trade front over the last two or three months (i.e., prior to Trump’s Monday posturing which won’t last), high odds of 75bps (or maybe even 100bps) of Fed cuts over the balance of the year, resilient aggregate profits and, most importantly, the fact that the benchmark already traded through 6,100, which is where Kostin’s year-end target sat prior to Monday evening.

There’s some analysis in Kostin’s 12-page rationale worth pulling out and highlighting. I’ll get to that separately. But here I just wanted to note that this is how the game’s supposed to be played. You want to stay on the right side of things, and if you’re a sell-sider with responsibility for the official house S&P call, there’s really no excuse for failing in that regard because you’re allowed to mark your forecast to market.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: The only thing sillier than a “forecast” that’s continually revised to reflect changing circumstances is one that isn’t.