WEBULL

S&P 500 At 10,000 By 2030? Yardeni Still Bets Big On The Roaring 2020s

Benzinga · 1d ago

Longtime Wall Street economist and market strategist Ed Yardeni doubled down on a call he first made years ago: that the 2020s could turn out to be a modern-day echo of the Roaring 1920s.

And in his view, the forces driving that boom are still very much intact.

“I could see the S&P 500 getting to 10,000 by the end of the decade,” Yardeni said this week in a podcast hosted by Wealthtrack.

US Economy And Stock Market Surpassed Extreme ‘Stress Tests’

According to Yardeni, investors continue to underestimate the economy's resilience.

In Yardeni's view, the U.S. economy and stock market have passed a series of extreme "stress tests" and emerged stronger.

"We had the pandemic… the lockdown recession… supply chain disruptions… inflation… tariffs… and now we’ve got some funky problems in the labor market," he said. "And here we are at an all-time record high in real GDP… in real consumption per household… and the stock market."

Yardeni framed the current decade as a modern echo of the 1920s. "The two decades rhyme and there are quite a few similarities."

The productivity boom is at the center of his optimism.

Much like the technological breakthroughs of the 1920s electrified that era's economy, Yardeni believes today's digital and AI-driven investments are quietly lifting output, restraining inflation, and supporting profit margins.

Companies, he indicated, are effectively forced to invest in technology just to remain competitive, and that capital spending is paying off in higher efficiency across the economy .

"We thought that productivity would make a pretty significant comeback," Yardeni said.

"That would have very positive consequences for economic growth, for keeping inflation down, for boosting real incomes of workers, and then, of course, boosting profit margins."

Another pillar of resilience, according to Yardeni, is the American consumer — particularly retiring baby boomers. He estimates that boomers are entering retirement with roughly $80 trillion in net worth, an unprecedented sum for a retiring generation.

"As fast as we're spending money, our net worth just keeps going up," he said, acknowledging that while the wealth isn't evenly distributed, it continues to fuel consumption.

How High Could Stocks Rise?

According to Yardeni, technology investment is now the core of business spending.

"Technology now accounts for over 50% of capital spending," he said, referring to tech-related capex. "Companies… have this attitude that they have to spend in technology because if they don’t, their competitors will and will use it to increase productivity, to cut costs."

Yardeni also challenged the popular narrative that rising interest rates must inevitably crush economic growth. In his view, today's rate environment is closer to historical "normal" than the ultra-low levels of the past decade.

Meanwhile, deep and flexible capital markets, shaped by hard lessons from the 2008 financial crisis, have become powerful shock absorbers, allowing the system to recover quickly from stress .

That resilience feeds directly into his market outlook. If productivity remains strong and a recession is avoided through the end of the decade, Yardeni believes corporate earnings can continue to rise, even if valuations stay elevated.

In his Roaring 2020s scenario, Yardeni expects the S&P 500 – as tracked by the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:VOO) – hitting 10,000 points by the end of the decade.

“And that’s really not crazy numbers to anticipate,” he added. “The resilience of the economy should continue to be visible in the resilience of earnings."

The Best Advice Is to ‘Stay Long'

Asked for the best investment advice he ever received, Yardeni didn't hesitate: "Stay long."

"My only regret in my investment life is that I just didn’t put everything into the Nasdaq and just, never looked at it," he said.

"The Nasdaq has just been an amazing performer for years and years."

To minimize emotional bias in his professional work, he said he mostly holds ETFs like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and the tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ).

"I try to have a portfolio where I’m not worrying about it, because then it can influence kind of my own work," Yardeni said.

He added: "There’s investing and then there’s trading. And investing is going to make you money over the long run. Trading is fine as long as you don’t have a day job."

Read Next:

Photo: Shutterstock

.