Goldman Sachs’s Cohen Says S&P 500 May Surge to 1,050

Back in January I had a comment at MarketBeat:

S&P estimates of $71 might be a tad high.
I’ve seen a credible case made for $45 trough EPS for this year.
So what kind of multiple do we put on that?
Why oh why won’t GS let Abby Cohen out of her undisclosed location to tell us S&P 1600 by June ‘10?
Or a reprise of her Barron’s Roundtable 2008 DJIA, 14750?
Like the old joke says:
“Two Irishmen walk out of a bar,

Hey, it COULD happen.”

An anonymous commenter replied:

Abby Cohen has one view: 20% upside. No matter where the market is.

At least she is polite.

The S&P 500 opened today at 872.74. Twenty percent upside works out to 1047.29.
From Bloomberg:

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may jump 20 percent to 1,050 over the next six to 12 months as investors buy stocks trading at low valuations, said Abby Joseph Cohen, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s senior investment strategist.

“You could see the market sustain at these levels,” Cohen, 57, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “We’re going to set a new trading range much higher than the trading range in February and March.”

Cohen was replaced as Goldman Sachs’s chief forecaster for the U.S. stock market a year ago. She had been the second-most bullish Wall Street strategist at the start of 2008, a year when the S&P 500 tumbled 38 percent to 903.25 for the steepest annual loss in seven decades. Cohen predicted in December 2007 that the index would end last year at 1,675. David Kostin took her job.

The S&P 500 closed at 872.81 yesterday, or 29 percent higher than the 12-year low reached in March. Kostin projects the index will finish this year at 940, which is also the median estimate among 11 strategists tracked by Bloomberg News. The measure closed between 676.53 and 869.89 in February and March....MORE