Sometimes a week can make a year.
The S&P 500 Index's best week in 13 months propelled it within half a percent of surpassing roughly a quarter of strategists' price targets for 2018.
"It's only been four days but it feels like 40," writes Christopher Harvey, head of equity strategy at Wells Fargo & Co.
"Overall, it suddenly feels like the consensus is in the reflation trade and almost daily there are more and more converts to the belief in a melt-up," he says.
Last week's gain of 2.6 percent took the benchmark for American equities to a record 2,743, just shy of the 2,750 mark that where Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson, Scotiabank's Vincent Delisle, and Stifel Nicolaus's Barry Bannister saw the S&P 500 Index finishing the year.
It outstripped the 2,650 price target of HSBC's Ben Laidler before the year even began.
Analysts had been scrambling to bump up their 2018 price targets, with both Harvey and Jonathan Golub of Credit Suisse Group AG proffering a more bullish outlook for U.S. equities in the final 10 days of the year.
