Stifel: US economy 'overheated expansion', AI investment cycle overwhelms consumer pressure BlockBeats News: On June 25th, Stifel, a large diversified financial services holding company in the United States, raised its year-end target for the S&P 500 and provided a stock allocation framework around a "high growth, high inflation" environment. The bank raised its year-end target for the S&P 500 to 7800 points, believing that the US economy is entering a "running hot" state, where economic growth is strengthening while inflationary pressures are also rising. Stifel's model shows that the growth momentum in the United States is strengthening, while the inflation momentum is also noticeably hot, which will change the market leading structure in the second half of the year. Stifel's biggest focus is not on traditional consumer sectors, but on investment oriented cyclical industries, including banking, transportation, materials, energy, semiconductors, software, and equipment. The bank believes that AI fixed assets investment is still expanding. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google and other large technology companies expect that the total capital expenditure in 2026 will reach about 725 billion dollars, higher than the previous expectation of about 100 billion dollars. This means that the AI investment chain may continue to outperform the consumer chain squeezed by inflation. Stifel suggests that investors reduce their reliance on optional consumption, essential consumption, communication services, and some financial services, as these areas have weaker profit corrections. On the contrary, the bank prefers cyclical value stocks and uses defensive value sectors such as insurance, automotive, energy, and banking for hedging.