Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist at Partners Group, walked onto CNBC on July 7, 2026 with a target that would have sounded aggressive six months ago and now sounds almost consensus. The S&P 500 could reach roughly 8,500 on 2027 earnings, with 8,200 the more likely landing spot by the end of 2027.
The index closed yesterday at 751.28 on SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), and Amoroso’s argument for why the next leg is achievable rests on one specific event that took her tail risks off the table.
What Changed Her Mind
The catalyst is the newly-signed Iran MOU that Amoroso says removes the geopolitical overhang Partners Group had been modeling all year. Her team had been penciling in 30 to 50 basis points of GDP growth drag and 50 to 100 basis points of inflation upside as live tail risks.
With those scenarios shelved, the framework flips. Consumer spending, corporate margins, and the global capex cycle move back to the front of the model. You can already see the shape of that regime change in the price action. The VIX sits at 15.81, down 14.1% on the week and in the 22.6th percentile of the past year, well off the 31.05 peak from March 27. Complacency, or a real repricing of tail risk. Amoroso is betting it is the latter.
The Earnings and Capex Engine
Her math works because the numerator, corporate profits, keeps getting revised up. Amoroso pointed to Q2 earnings growing 25% year over year against expectations of 15%, driven largely by big tech and semiconductors, with Q3 tracking another 20% and S&P profit margins at 14% or higher. The macro data agrees. BEA corporate profits hit $4.4 trillion in Q1 2026, up 12.8% year over year, and the information sector alone printed $352.5 billion in profit, up from $270.8 billion in Q2 2025.
Then there is the capex story, which is now genuinely multi-region. Vanguard’s outlook pegs the AI scalers at $2.1 trillion in cumulative capital expenditure from Q1 2025 through Q4 2027. And Europe is finally showing up. NATO members agreed at the Hague summit to a new 5% of GDP defense-spending standard, and the U.S. FY 2027 Department of War request came in at $1.5 trillion, a roughly 42% increase. That is the second leg of the capex barbell Amoroso is describing.
The Road to 8,200 to 8,500
Reverse-engineer the target and it becomes a straightforward forward-multiple exercise on 2027 earnings. Real GDP grew 2.1% in Q1 2026 with gross private investment up 7.9%, which is exactly the broadening capex signal she is pointing to. The Fed funds upper bound has been parked at 3.75% for seven months, and the 10-year Treasury sits at 4.49%. That yield backdrop is not friendly to multiple expansion, so most of the work has to come from the E, not the P/E.
Amoroso is essentially arguing that 20%-plus earnings growth compounding through 2027 justifies a mid-20s multiple on next year’s number, and that the geopolitical discount previously applied to that multiple is gone. Credible, if the earnings deliver.
The Risks She Is Glossing Over
The thesis has two soft spots. First, inflation is not entirely tame. Core PCE hit 130.08 in May, its highest reading in the 12-month window and in the 90.9th percentile of the trailing distribution. A 50-to-100 basis point upside surprise, exactly the scenario Amoroso just removed, would put rate cuts back in doubt and hit the discount rate on 2027 earnings.
Second, BlackRock‘s (NYSE:BLK | BLK Price Prediction) own 2026 outlook warns that the finance literature is replete with historical episodes of capex overinvestment, and the firm entered 2026 with reduced U.S. equity exposure for exactly that reason. If AI capex disappoints on returns, the earnings leg breaks. For readers thinking about how to position around a call like this, The Breakout Buyer’s Rulebook is worth a look. Amoroso’s number is defensible. It is also, by her own admission, the bull case dressed up as a base case.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks