(Bloomberg) -- Piper Sandler & Co.’s macro research team will no longer publish a single-number forecast for where the S&P 500 Index will end the year, calling it an inefficient way to communicate with clients.

Predicting the US equity benchmark’s performance in absolute terms has become futile in light of the concentration of companies in the gauge, with the 10 biggest stocks accounting for 37% of the index, according to Piper Sandler’s chief investment strategist Michael Kantrowitz.

“I didn’t see the value in raising my target again, given how it’s become such a poor form of explaining stocks, which is what it was initially meant to represent,” he said. “Having target prices on individual stocks makes sense, but makes less sense nowadays for the index.”

Kantrowitz held a bearish outlook on the stock market through most of 2023, but reversed his view at the end of the year. In February, he raised his S&P 500 target again to 5,250. The index is currently trading at more than 5,500.

Tony Dwyer, who recently left his day-to-day strategist role at Canaccord Genuity LLC, is among the soothsayers who’ve abandoned year-end targets for the S&P 500, saying it’s impossible to make calls when only a handful of stocks comprise such a large share of the index’s market value.

Kantrowitz reiterated that he remains encouraged by US stocks, but is somewhat more cautious than he was at start of 2024. He recommends a “QuARP” investing approach, which means buying quality stocks at reasonable prices.

The 43% spread between the highest and lowest year-end S&P 500 targets among the strategists surveyed by Bloomberg in June is the second-largest in the past 15 years among surveys. The only time that Wall Street’s views had a wider split at this point of a year was in 2023. The 500-member index closed at 5,537.02 on Wednesday. 

--With assistance from Lu Wang.

(Updates with S&P 500’s closing price. A previous version of the story corrected spelling of Kantrowitz in fourth paragraph.)

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