Morningstar's Q1 2025 US Market Outlook: Markets Priced to Perfection, But Will It Last?

The transformational nature of emerging AI combined with moderating inflation, declining long-term interest rates, easing monetary policy, and a soft economic landing has provided the tailwind needed to push the stock market to new highs. Yet the wildcard in play for 2025 is the potential implementation of tariffs by the incoming Trump administration. The key question for investors will be: how much of the tariff talk was campaign trail rhetoric versus to what extent, when, and where will tariffs be applied? In a world of high valuations and potential for high volatility, we think portfolio positioning is even more important than ever. Join Morningstar’s Dave Sekera, CFA, Chief US Market Strategist and Preston Caldwell, Chief US Economist as they review why we expect the economy will re-accelerate in the second half of 2025 and which areas in the market still offer upside opportunities. Learn where we see undervalued opportunities to overweight, overvalued sectors & stocks to underweight, and how we expect the US economy will play out over the course of this year. In this webinar, we’ll: - Break down our valuations and identify undervalued opportunities - Highlight long-term secular growth themes and investable contrarian plays. - Provide our forecasts for real US GDP, inflation, and interest rates. In our market outlook, we utilize a bottom-up perspective to determine market valuation. By leveraging off of the 1,600 companies covered by Morningstar's equity analysts, we identify which areas are undervalued versus which are overvalued. From growth stocks to value stocks and from small-cap to large-cap, we’ll identify where we see value today. Following the presentation, we’ll take as many questions from the audience as time allows. This webinar has been accepted by the CFP® Board for one continuing education (CE) credit for CFP® designations.