JPMorgan Chase Says ‘Small Correction’ Setting Stocks for Strong 2026 – Here’s the Bank’s Target

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase says a small market correction could set stocks to skyrocket next year.

In a new interview on Bloomberg Podcasts, JPMorgan’s private bank co-head of global investment strategy Grace Peters says small corrections are healthy, and this one could prep the S&P 500 for double-digit returns in 2026.

“A small correction, of which I define as anything [between] four, five to eight percent, is not unhealthy. And actually, we think it would pave the way to 2026 being actually quite a strong year.

So our expectations are that, driven by corporate earnings growth of around 11%, you could see the S&P deliver double digit returns in 2026.

So that takes you to around 7300. And that is, you know, it’s a bold call in so far as that would be a fourth year of double digit equity market returns, which we haven’t seen for over 30 years.”

Peters goes on to address gold, saying that the bank is “being bold” on its prediction of $5,300 per ounce.

“We’re being bold when it comes to gold, as we were in 2025. We’re doing it again in 2026. And because many of the drivers we still think remain in play. In the outlook, we explore three key themes – artificial intelligence, global fragmentation and inflation.

And gold fits two out of those three, the latter two fragmentation and inflation risk. To some extent, buying of EM (emerging market) central banks, I think is still going to be a key driver. That’s been a theme over the last couple of years linked to geopolitical threats. But when we look across EM central banks, it’s still a good group of them that have got below 10% holding of gold.

China is now up to about 9%. But if you look at European Central banks as some sort of benchmark, they are at around 15% plus. So I still think more buying from EM central banks is linked to geopolitical issues. And ditto for large institutional investors and also retail money as well.”

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