How wealthy investors are navigating the markets after the S&P 500’s worst month in a year
Investors weathered the worst month for the S & P 500 since March 2025 as the Iran war, rising oil prices, artificial intelligence disruption fears and sticky inflation all weighed on market sentiment. For many high and ultra-high net worth investors, the volatility has been an opportunity to buy dips, rebalance investments and look for individual beneficiaries of the geopolitical tension, oil shock and shifting view of the U.S. economy. Keeping calm and keeping cash Cash is king for R360, a group for ultra-high net worth investors with more than $100 million in assets. Members are currently holding up to 30% in cash and short-duration debt, according to R360 founding partner Barbara Goodstein. “The big opportunities might be on the horizon and our members have a lot of liquidity in case that opportunity presents itself,” said Goodstein, who emphasized group members have not been selling. “This is a group that invests for the long term. These are not people who are pulling money out. This is generational wealth, so they are not worried about short term flips in the market.” Jason Katz of UBS, who focuses on high net worth clients — especially in sports and entertainment — is seeing a similar trend. “They are looking for the sign. There is signal and there is noise and it’s hard to discern between the two,” said Katz. “They don’t mind holding cash because the odds of the Fed cutting and those money market rates going lower have diminished in the face of all this. So keeping some money in cash earning 3% and change is not the worst place to be hiding.” Christopher Keller, managing director, national private bank at Fifth Third Bank, sees a similar trend where high net worth investors are seeing opportunities in the Treasury market. “With the 10-year Treasury up to 4.3% there has been interest in clients to buy some intermediate fixed income,” said Keller. “It’s more in the 3-5, 3-6 (year Treasury) area … it’s not overly bullish, we just have had this move up in rates.” Positioning for a pullback Sameer Samana, head of global equities and real assets at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said the sharp pullback in equities has created opportunities for high- and ultra-high net worth investors to buy tech at more reasonable valuations. “I think this is a scenario where if you look at the tech sector and you look at software companies, look at hardware, that sector is a prime opportunity for high net worth investors to buy the dip on. I think another would be financials,” said Samana. He added large caps are also the closest thing to a “safe haven” in the current market. “They tend to have just really clean balance sheets, they have high levels of profitability,” said Samana, “They have a lot of cash flow. … Obviously a lot of them have been spending on things like AI but if they decided to stop spending on AI, they would still have a boatload of cashflow to do decide what to do with. We like that optionality.” Large caps, however, didn’t fare so well during the first quarter. The S & P 500 shed 4.6% in Q1. That’s its worst quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2022 — when it plunged 5.3%. .SPX YTD mountain SPX in 2026 R360 founder Charlie Garcia forecast a conflict with Iran in a post on Feb. 11 . Now he’s seeing the potential for a deeper correction. “I have things on my radar and if things go crazy, which I think they will in the next six weeks, I feel there is going to be a major downturn,” he told CNBC. “There is a lot of leverage in the market. There will be some great opportunities to buy things at much cheaper prices.” Garcia added he is long in both energy and defense with a focus on Lockheed Martin and RTX in the U.S. defense space. Fifth Third’s Keller said clients were split on allocations of new money. In the beginning of the month and the Iran conflict, many bought the dips on the S & P 500 equal weight, small caps and international index funds, but in the back end of March, he saw renewed interest in the tech trade. “Over the last week or so there has definitely been interest in tech,” said Keller, “But the tech side is tough because they already own a lot of this from the last 10 years. They already own Nivida and Super Micro . It’s just a question: do I really need more? That’s the portfolio construction piece they are wrestling with.” The energy and commodity trade The energy trade was the best performer in March with the energy sector leading the S & P 500 and the State Street SPDR S & P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP) surging more than double digits higher. Still, Wells Fargo’s Samana advises high net worth clients to view the energy market as a trade and the metal market as an opportunity after gold, silver and platinum fell sharply last month. “We would want people to be buying gold and precious metals and trading the movement of oil and energy. History tells you these spike in oil don’t last. They should be favoring gold and precious metals at the portfolio level,” he said. However, Garcia and many investors in the R360 group have shifted 40% of their new money investments to a mix of energy and commodities with Garcia advising members invest in Canadian Natural Resources , Exxon Mobil , Chevron , Cheniere Energy and the State Street SPDR S & P Oil & Gas Explration & Production ETF (XOP) . “I think petroleum and oil prices are going to stay higher than most people think,” said Garcia.
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