• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
FinanceInflation

Wells Fargo CIO warns that there’s one thing Wall Street hasn’t realized yet about inflation and thinks investors should ‘be careful’

Anne Sraders
By
Anne Sraders
Anne Sraders
Down Arrow Button Icon
Anne Sraders
By
Anne Sraders
Anne Sraders
Down Arrow Button Icon
July 22, 2022, 5:00 AM ET
Inflation worries have been dogging the markets for months.
Inflation worries have been dogging the markets for months. Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

It’s not just the weather that’s scorching hot. Inflation has been on a tear, hitting 9.1% year-over-year in June. And one top investment officer is worried the Street still isn’t properly assessing the path of inflation and how it might impact trading as we head further into 2022.

“I think what Wall Street doesn’t realize or hasn’t quite embraced yet—and I think is lying in the forward looking data here—is I think the inflation data is going to whipsaw here hard in the next couple of months,” and fall lower, Darrell Cronk, Wells Fargo’s CIO for Wealth and Investment Management and president of Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Fortune.

He argues that “frankly, the question isn’t whether it’s peak inflation. The question is: how durable, how broad it is, and how quickly it comes down.” His worry is that investors may have a false sense of security if inflation quickly cools off.

“I would be careful,” Cronk warned. “Would inflation coming down be good news? Absolutely. But you have to understand why [it is] coming down, and part of it is the baseline effects of the year-over-year math.”

He points to a host of other factors—like declines in commodity prices and real wages—that suggest the July and August CPI, or consumer price index, prints are “going to come down hard.” His concern for investors is that “that’s going to have Wall Street convinced that the inflation battle is won—that all of a sudden we came off the peak 9.1% and inflation is decelerating quickly,” which could prompt investors to load back into “some of the old non-inflation trades, like aggressively long tech or some of the long duration-type assets,” he said. He doesn’t think Wall Street has “figured out yet” how that would impact near-term positioning in the market.

The problem is that hypothetically, even if inflation were to come down to 7% or 6% year-over-year, the Fed’s inflation target is still around 2%, Cronk notes. “Getting it from 6% to 5% and 5% to 4% and 4% to 3% is going to be really hard, right? It’s going to take a lot of work by tightening financial conditions and demand destruction,” he noted. “Something has to give there: either the [Federal Reserve] then blinks and says, ‘Okay, maybe we don’t need it at 2%, 2.5%,’ or they hold the line [and] keep raising interest rates [and] keep doing quantitative tightening…which would be hard on the economy and hard on risk assets,” he said. Currently the Fed is on track to keep aggressively hiking interest rates to tame inflation, with some expecting the Fed to hike by another 0.75 basis points later this month.

Given how hot inflation is, Cronk isn’t convinced the Federal Reserve will take its foot off the gas, even if the stock market starts to suffer: “They’re gonna lose credibility.”

Ultimately, he cautions investors that while there could be “a good trading opportunity” in this scenario, they should “be careful not to assume that we’re back to early cycle dynamics and get out over your skis on positioning.”

3,500 level

And Cronk isn’t optimistic about the latest rally in equities, either. The S&P 500 is up about 6% in the past month, but according to Cronk, this looks like “a little bit of a bear market rally,” and that “we’re at a tenuous point in the markets,” he said.

Given technical support and resistance levels, he says he’d wait until the 3,500 level to start adding to positions (the S&P 500 closed at around 3,999 on Thursday).

The Fed’s “tightening of financial conditions, along with…earnings rolling over, I think, are gonna lead to a challenging second half here.”

Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.

About the Author
Anne Sraders
By Anne Sraders
LinkedIn iconTwitter icon
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Finance

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Finance

Trump’s 927-page disclosure is just a normal Tuesday for direct indexing and crypto wealth managers
InvestingDonald Trump
Trump’s 927-page disclosure is just a normal Tuesday for direct indexing and crypto wealth managers
By Catherina GioinoJuly 1, 2026
8 hours ago
US President Donald Trump sits in silence with his hands folded on top of each other.
CryptoDonald Trump
Inside Trump’s $1.4 billion crypto empire: Altcoins, Bitcoin—and a stake in Michael Saylor’s Strategy
By Camila Grigera NaónJuly 1, 2026
9 hours ago
Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist.
EconomyU.S. economy
‘It’s fair to ask whether it was worth it’: The Iran war has cost Americans $1,000 per household—and that’s a conservative estimate, Mark Zandi says
By Tristan BoveJuly 1, 2026
12 hours ago
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as the First Lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
PoliticsDonald Trump
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as the First Lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
By Mia OsmonbekovJuly 1, 2026
12 hours ago
Donald Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office, smiling and with his hands folded in front of him.
PoliticsDonald Trump
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 1, 2026
13 hours ago
Current price of Bitcoin for July 1, 2026
Personal FinanceCryptocurrency
Current price of Bitcoin for July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
17 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
23 hours ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
7 days ago
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
Newsletters
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
By Diane BradyJuly 1, 2026
21 hours ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
17 hours ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
5 days ago
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
Success
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
By Sydney LakeJune 29, 2026
3 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.