
Wall Street is heading into the final stretch of the second-quarter earnings season riding the strongest pace of profit growth in five years—alongside fading bets on a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike, which should support stock performance deep into the autumn. The market’s most-watched analysts, however, are still forecasting end-of-year price targets for the that suggest meager gains over the coming months—even as they predict impressive profit growth over the coming quarters, without fretting too much about the amount investors will pay for it. Gains in the high 20% range are also forecast for both the third and fourth quarters, which would bring full-year growth to around 33.3%, or $360 a share in S&P 500 terms.
























