Quick Read – SPY gained 73% over five years without a 10%+ pullback since April 2025, and Wren calls the Fed’s tightening shift a buying signal. – Wren favors industrials, utilities, and financials over mega-cap tech, citing AI exposure at far lower valuations. – Wren projects…
25% earnings growth next year and urges investors to hold dry powder rather than chase today’s prices. – Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, went on CNBC this morning with a message for retail investors. The Federal Reserve has flipped from an easing bias to a tightening bias, and Wren wants investors to treat the resulting wobble as an invitation rather than a warning shot. “You don’t want to overthink this thing,” Wren said. “Any time there’s a change like that with the federal reserve, it’s going to cause some downside volatility in the market, especially after we’ve had a hell of a run here in the last three and a half years.” The run he is talking about The numbers behind that “hell of a run” matter
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 24% over the past year and 87% over five years. Since April 2025 alone, SPY has climbed 31%, and Wren points out that there has not been a 10%+ pullback since April 2025. Real drawdowns have been extinct for more than a year, which is when people forget they exist.
The very recent action has cooled. SPY is down 2.23% in the past week and 1.62% over the past month, with the index sitting at $735.02. That qualifies as a wobble, and it is what a Fed pivot tends to produce before anyone has had time to recalibrate a forward earnings model.