Plenty of stocks are working in this market — you just have to look beyond tech

Here is a story making headlines in the economy: We're in one of those markets where it seems like nothing is working. The pain starts early with the evening S & P and Nasdaq futures giving you a double dose of crimson. But the trusty S & P Short Range Oscillator isn't oversold enough to hold your nose and buy something.

So you just feel like sitting on your hands. The relevant word in my first sentence, however, is "seems," because there are actually many things working — so many that it calls into question what's actually wrong with this market. Consider the case of Wells Fargo , a stock with a price-to-earnings ratio of 12 that had a quarter that was roundly disliked by the analyst community, despite some perfunctory price target increases.

Economic Details

When I talked to CEO Charlie Scharf, I was so excited that he was going for broke, using his franchise strength to expand into mergers and acquisitions, as well as initial public offerings. In 2008, Wells Fargo bought Wachovia, which had previously merged with Prudential, A. Edwards, and First Union; the latter had actually bought Wachovia but kept its name, as it was considered a better brand.

These brokerages were all very good and did a great deal of business. But they disappeared with the Great Recession and the consolidation of all of them under the roof of Wells Fargo, which would soon be dealing with so many regulatory issues. Even as the bank had a national footprint, it did little M & A to speak of, arguably less than outfits like Centerview Partners and Lazard, and you don't think of Wells as much as an underwriter, either.

That's unacceptable to Scharf, who knows everyone in the business and recognizes that there is poachable talent at rival banks. JPMorgan , for one, has lots of executive talent that was passed over because CEO Jamie Dimon — with whom Scharf worked for 24 years — decided to stay at the helm far longer than anyone thought he would (20 years and counting). Charlie knows that in the new world of artificial intelligence, you can do far more with less.

Analyst Views

He has eliminated roughly 23% of the workforce, has become far more efficient, and has recognized the limited value of brick and mortar even as his bank has a more local feel to it. So what he has been doing is putting together a team of very senior bankers who could have run JPMorgan or any firm if there were an opportunity, and telling them to build out M & A and underwriting, which have much better margins and lower risk than lending. He's getting deals, and he's moving up in the global mergers and acquisitions league table.

I bring all of this up because Wells Fargo's stock went down on the analyst commentary and then went up when smart people who talked to Charlie directly, not through the filter of the NIM-NII obsessed analysts, recognized that he is going to give Bank of America and Citigroup at least a run for the money. In two years, we will laugh at how wrong the analysts were.

Financial markets are tracking the development closely as investors assess the likely impact.