The instinct to move to cash when markets get ugly is one of the most natural impulses in investing.
It also happens to be one of the most expensive ones, and Wells Fargo just published data to prove it
The numbers behind the warning are more specific than most investors expect. Wells Fargo Investment Institute cautions against emotional investing Jaden Frazier, analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, published a market commentary warning indicating that investors who react emotionally during periods of volatility risk missing the stock market’s strongest rebounds, according to the Institute. “Markets are forward-looking, so rebounds can happen far quicker and more suddenly than anticipated,” Frazier wrote in the report. That single sentence is the core of the entire argument, and the data he published alongside it makes it harder to dismiss than most boilerplate stay-invested commentary.
S&P 500 data reveal surprising trend of best days for gains The headline figure is striking. Sixty percent of the S&P 500’s best trading days between May 1996 and April 2026 occurred during bear markets. An additional 18% took place in the early stages of new bull markets, according to GuruFocus.