With egg prices up and the S&P 500 down in 2025, there are signs the U.S. is already in the early stages of a recession.
BCA’s chief strategist, Peter Berezin, appears to concur at least in part with such an assessment as he is responsible for one of the biggest contrarian U.S. stock market forecasts of the year. Specifically, while the average S&P 500 forecast stands at 6,500 points and Oppenheimer set it at a high of 7,100, BCA estimates a fall to 4,450.
While not as dire as the collapses of the Dot-com bust or the Great Recession, the investment research firm’s prediction is indeed dire as it would constitute a 22.45% drop from the press time levels at 5,738 points, and a 27.57% crash from the February 2025 highs above 6,144.
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Why BCA is forecasting a massive stock market plunge
Berezin’s bearish estimates, per the expert, date back to mid-2024, though the forecast turned grimmer following Donald Trump’s re-election. Unlike most other prominent analysts who estimated the promised tariffs would be a form of economic gunboat diplomacy, BCA assessed them as the result of genuine protectionist attitudes.
ariffs are primarily a means by which a country can protect its domestic industry from external competition and only have a secondary use as a form of economic warfare.
Investors have certainly taken President Trump’s outward-facing measures as more about aggression than protection, given their reaction to the news of dues imposed upon countries like Canada, Mexico, and China.
In addition to the relative moderate year-to-date (YTD) decline for benchmark indices, multiple high-profile stocks that have either been enjoying a protracted rise of soared on the Republican’s re-election – Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) being the most prominent examples – have collapsed since January 2.
Lastly, in addition to the bearish S&P 500 target, the former Senior Global Economist at Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) believes there is a strong possibility that there is approximately a 50% chance that the U.S. entered a recession in March, though he cautioned that it will not be confirmed for months even if true.
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