Meet Dr. Ed Yardeni.

Apart from being a most accomplished independent, economist practitioner, with private practice, and corporations and even small nations as clients, he is also known in parts of the financial world as a co-inventor of the Fed Model.

Regular readers of his blog, and more specifically, his client-only forecasting and research know him as a pragmatic optimist; much more sophisticated than a market bull, but effectively, on ‘the bullish’ side.

Alas today, in ‘Dr. Ed Terms’ if you will, looks to have been a dark day.

Not just because of the day’s tumultuous market events.

It might actually have been even worse than that.

Even before any of the day’s market routs, he downgraded his assessment of the outcome of the year in broad equity market terms.

Naturally, even his downgrades are measured and still afford room for reasonable optimism.

But downgrade it was.

As I said, his forecasts are usually client-only content.

It’s only permissible to quote brief excerpts, hence the following is short.

But it’s quite enough.

“I am now officially lowering my year-end target to 1250, unchanged for the rest of the year and for the entire year. I’m still expecting some improvement in economic growth during the second half of the year in the US. I’m still forecasting that the S&P 500 will earn $99 per share this year and $105 next year thanks to opportunities for more revenues and earnings growth overseas. I am predicting that the forward P/E will remain around 12. However, there is probably more downside risk than upside potential in the valuation multiple.”