Wall Street banks are turning more bullish on US stocks, despite President Donald Trump’s renewed threats of steep tariffs on major trading partners, with most big companies expected to shrug off the turmoil in the upcoming earnings season.

Goldman Sachs strategists this week joined JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Citigroup and Deutsche in lifting their end-of-year target for the S&P 500, believing the index will rally 11 per cent beyond the record high it hit last week. 

Goldman said the administration’s shifting tariff policy had generated “large uncertainty”. But it added that the outlook had been buoyed by the “fundamental strength of the largest stocks”, hopes of “earlier and deeper” interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and investors’ willingness to look beyond any potential weakness during second-quarter earnings season, which kicks off next week.