JPMorgan: S&P 500 Year-End Target Raised to 8,000 Points, AI Monetization Starting to Catch Up with Spending Pace

According to TechFlow Research, JPMorgan's US stock strategy report on August 9 raised the S&P 500 year-end target price from 7,800 points to 8,000 points, the 2026 EPS forecast from $358 to $365 (+35%), and the 2027 EPS forecast to $420 (+15%). Among the 87% of companies that have disclosed earnings, 78% beat earnings expectations, with Q2 earnings growth reaching 53%. The report noted that AI capital expenditure is expected to reach $900 billion in 2026 (+85%), surpassing $1.2 trillion in 2027, with hyperscale vendors accounting for approximately 87%. However, cloud revenue realization is accelerating: AWS up 37%, Azure up 43%, Google Cloud up 82%; AWS backlog orders increased 36% quarter-over-quarter to $496 billion, and Google backlog orders increased by $55 billion to $514 billion. JPMorgan believes the order coverage ratio is improving, and monetization pace is catching up with spending pace. Excluding Google and Amazon's combined $152 billion in unrealized private equity gains (mainly from Anthropic's $65 billion financing), Q2 actual earnings growth was about 31%, and 2026 normalized EPS is about $347 (+28%). JPMorgan maintains the assumption of approximately 20x forward P/E ratio for the S&P 500 index unchanged, stating that the earnings upward revision is sufficient to