Truist chief investment officer and chief market strategist Keith Lerner expects the market to continue to climb in the final quarter of 2025, but he tells Yahoo Finance earnings moderation could derail fourth quarter gains.
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00:00 Speaker A
So you’re saying Keith, bottom line, the stock market here, we’re higher at year end than we are now. Um, what what could derail that, Keith? What would be on your wall of worries?
00:11 Keith
Yeah. So, just one question going back to the, you know, why we think the market likely moves higher even if you see at least one more hiccup before year end. When you head into the fourth quarter after you’ve had strong momentum, so more than 25 new highs, the final quarter is is up on average about 5% and it’s been up about 89%. So you have history as a starting point on your side.
00:36 Keith
To your question of what what would derail that? Well, I think the main thing is going back to my my main point of if profits are the north star and they’ve continued to outperform, if we see moderation in that, that will be the concern. And we have to remember last quarter we had a blowout earning season relative to expectations. Now, where as we kind of move through a little bit later on the tariff flow and the consumer, we’ll get a better read into this next earning season. So I think that’s the that’s the key. Of course, something can come from left field, that’s hard to predict. So we’re really focused, you know, really on um the the the the main driver to us is profits.
