Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) was rewarded for its stock market strength in the last two weeks with reinvigorated Wall Street bullishness and a particularly strong endorsement from Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).
Specifically, BofA added the technology giant to its list of best investment ideas among the equities boasting a ‘Buy’ rating.
The move came shortly after Bank of America’s Justin Post reiterated his ‘Buy’ rating for Meta stock and set the 12-month share price target at $835, thus indicating investors can expect a 32.23% rise for their position should they purchase.
Wall Street predicts Meta stock price for the next 12 months
While BofA’s decision to add Mark Zuckerberg’s company to its top ideas list represents a particularly decisive recommendation, the bullish attitude itself is hardly a standout among major financial institutions.
Indeed, the vast majority of ratings assigned since July started – Needham, JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM), and BMO Securities being the outlier with their ‘Hold’ recommendations – ranked Meta shares as a ‘Buy.’
Furthermore, the equity is, overall, deemed a ‘Strong Buy’ by Wall Street and is, on average, expected to rally 29.40% to $817.15 in the next 12 months, per the data Finbold retrieved from TipRanks on July 10, 2026.
The optimism surrounding Meta shares is accompanied by the firm’s recent market performance. Though the technology giant remains 2.91% in the red year-to-date (YTD), it started a rally in late June that took it 16.32% higher within just two weeks and to its latest closing price of $631.48.
Additionally, even though reports indicating Meta is preparing to rent out its excess artificial intelligence (AI) capacity were taken as a concerning sign for the wider industry, shareholders appear to have welcomed the news for the company itself.
Meta stock 2026 bear case
Nonetheless, the firm’s history might simultaneously be presenting some undervalued risks for hopeful traders. Despite its size, Meta’s innovativeness can be questioned, considering that the concept of social media was hardly novel at the time of Facebook’s launch.
The overall state of the company only deteriorated over the years as it pivoted to purchasing promising potential competitors – WhatsApp and Instagram being prime examples – rather than creating exciting projects of its own.
As the XXI century rolled into its third decade, the situation apparently took another turn for the worse as the firm invested so heavily into the Metaverse – something of a ‘dead on arrival’ concept – that it even changed its name to reflect the then-new direction.
Even more recently, Meta Platforms’ involvement with AI appears somewhat rudderless, with the potential renting out of capacity serving as an example.
Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly remarked that he thinks the firm has a use for the compute only for said use, apparently proving to be an attempt to pivot toward having a neocloud division.
While the so-called neoclouds are a relatively new concept, Meta would not be the first one, and it would not be the first major firm to begin operating such a business – Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) has already made agreements with both Anthropic and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to rent out its data centers.
Meta draws regulator ire, user dissatisfaction
Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg’s technology giant has also been accumulating ill will both from regulators and customers for years. For example, it not only still holds the record for the largest GDPR fine in history but is also again drawing the ire of EU watchdogs for allegedly deliberately making its platforms excessively addictive.
On the user end, Meta’s products have become something of a poster child for the process of ‘enshittification’ – a phenomenon in which platforms that started as genuinely useful and enjoyable slowly morph into a machine for exacting value for the operator at the expense of everyone else involved.
Why Meta stock is likely still a ‘Strong Buy’ in 2026
Still, despite all of Meta Platform’s mishaps, BofA’s decision to list it among its top investment picks and the overall Wall Street bullishness can still easily prove correct.
Mark Zuckerberg’s firm has a history of resilience and, though social media itself was not a new idea when Facebook was launched, the company’s approach to user growth and monetization was undoubtedly groundbreaking.
Likewise, Meta has so far been able to weather most storms it faces and usually to its own example. A prime example of the fact came in the form of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which, at the time, appeared as if it would severely injure the company but ultimately apparently normalized big tech’s disregard for user privacy and preferences.
Featured image via Shutterstock
