Yardeni: 2028 S&P 500 Earnings Views Stay Near $500, Though He Sees $450

Wall Street analysts have by and large kept their projections for S&P 500 earnings, according to Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. For 2028 they still stand close to $500 a share, and that held even after Alphabet and Intel sold off.

His own figure for 2028, though, is $450 — roughly 9% under the $493 consensus he pointed to in a note dated October 24. Anyone holding the S&P 500 is thereby exposed to profit growth he regards as too bullish.

Why Isn’t Profit Growth Lifting the S&P 500?

Yardeni laid out the argument in an interview held before the US midterm elections. Estimates tracked week by week were more or less unchanged in the week of October 26, he said, and analysts remain firmly bullish on both 2027 and 2028.

The index, however, has lagged those profits, judging by the figures in the note. Forward earnings per share — the profit expected over the coming 12 months — climbed 31% this year, while the S&P 500 was up 11.4% over the same stretch.

The forward price-to-earnings multiple, which values stocks against expected profit, therefore came down 13.5% this year. His 7,900 target for year-end applies a multiple of 18.6 to a forecast of $425 for 2027 earnings.

The 2027 consensus of $424.56 is almost exactly on that number. He lowered the multiple from 19.8 in September, the month he shifted an earlier 8,400 target out to mid-2027.

Could AI Credit Stress Undermine the 7,900 Target?

Estimates survived a Nasdaq-100 selloff in late October that erased about $2 trillion in market value. Alphabet posted its worst session on record, and Intel dropped nearly 29% in a single day.

Bond investors are acting as a check on AI borrowers, according to Yardeni, who describes the trend as healthy. The note points to wider credit default swap spreads, a measure of default risk, at Oracle and at the AI cloud provider CoreWeave.

Beyond that, he said the hyperscalers — the biggest cloud providers — already have their data-center commitments and backlogs locked in.

In Yardeni’s view, the bonds of AI companies are better positioned than their shares, and it is still not clear when the spending will translate into earnings.

That leaves the 7,900 call leaning on the multiple, because 2027 profits already line up with consensus. A decline in bond yields would relieve that pressure, whereas higher borrowing costs for AI could bring 2028 estimates down first.