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Follow Oppenheimer? Buy S&P 500 ETFs

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The S&P 500 is off 13.5% this year (as of Aug 3, 2022). Heightened rising rate worries amid super-hawkish Fed cues, red-hot inflation, supply chain woes and the Russia-Ukraine war have dampened Wall Street this year. The index saw the worst start to a year since 1939.

But things are turning for the better. The index is up 7.6% past month. Those who are worried about the S&P 500 market crash in early phase of this year may find this piece of information useful as investment banking firm Oppenheimer said that the S&P 500 could gain by another 12% by year-end, as quoted on a TIPRanks article, published on Yahoo Finance.

Oppenheimer’s Head of Technical Analysis Ari Wald believes that the latest gains in the S&P 500 to continue ahead. Wald explained, “we see upside into 4,300 and are open to a higher low above 3,920 in the seasonally weak September period. Overall, we maintain our view that the index is on the road to recovery and think 4,600 (~12% upside) is reasonable by year-end.”

Better-than-feared Q2 earnings from some of the world's biggest companies and easing pace of the future Fed rate hikes should bolster the index ahead. Investors have re-priced stocks too quickly this year to bake in sky-high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s faster interest rate hikes.

 According to Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, global interest rates will likely keep rising until 2023 and that’s when continued rate hikes will cool inflation and help stabilize economies and markets, as quoted on CNBC. 

Per Zacks Earnings Trends issued on Jul 27 2022, total S&P 500 earnings are expected to increase +4.2% from the same period last year on +10.4% higher revenues. Expected earnings growth for 2022 and 2023 are 8.2% and 7.9%, respectively on 9.7% and 4.4% revenue growth, per the report.

The Earnings Report also highlighted that margin reached the cyclical high point in 2018 as a result of the tax cut legislation, but modestly shrank the following year 2019 and contracted massively due to the pandemic in 2020. Margins rebounded impressively in 2021 and are on track to reach new all-time records in 2022 and expand further in 2023.

ETFs to Watch

If you follow Oppenheimer, you can easily bet on the recent rally in the S&P 500. Against this backdrop, investors may track S&P 500 ETFs like Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO - Free Report) , iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV - Free Report) and SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY - Free Report) .

Investors can also play the growth part of the index with (SPYG - Free Report) and the value part of the index with (SPYV - Free Report) . SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF Fund (SPYD - Free Report) is a good bet for the dividend plays of the index. SPYD yields 3.84% annually.

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