Through July 2, the S&P 500 was up 9.3% year to date, and strategists said it can still climb another 10.2% to reach an 8,250 year-end target.
The call rests on a view that the AI trade is deflating rather than bursting, leading them to keep a market-weight stance on Information Technology instead of cutting exposure.
Investor doubts have grown around AI returns, excess capacity, Chinese competition, falling token prices and the risk that fast innovation could quickly obsolete expensive chips and memory.
Valuations remain the key defense against bubble comparisons: the S&P 500 Information Technology sector trades at a 22.2 forward P/E versus 20.4 for the broader index, far below the 55.0 and 25.0 peaks seen before the early-2000s tech wreck.