Futures Now

'Ghost of impeachment' is haunting an overreacting market: Strategist

Strategist: This is the biggest 'enemy' to the market
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Strategist: This is the biggest 'enemy' to the market

They say the only thing to fear is fear itself, and that's exactly what happened in the markets this week, according to one strategist.

With President Donald Trump reeling amid a series of political setbacks, investors have become wary. In a recent interview with CNBC's "Futures Now," Oppenheimer's John Stoltzfus said the "ghost of impeachment" got the best of the markets last week — and subsequently sent the Dow tumbling nearly 400 points in spite of strong fundamentals and earnings.

"That's the big worry behind everything," he said last week. "People jump to conclusions and when we looked at the market [on Wednesday] and we looked at comments that were coming across the board related to that, there was a lot of the ghost of impeachment kind of thing."

The strategist's comments came just a day after the market saw its biggest selloff of the year, with the S&P 500 and Dow seeing their biggest drop since September while the Nasdaq had its worst day since Brexit in June.

A week of political turmoil, one that included fallout from the firing of former FBI director James Comey and the president's alleged revelation of classified intelligence information to Russia's foreign minister, had left investors wary of the outlook ahead.

"It doesn't mean that that's necessarily going to happen, but negative projection is an enemy of the market at times like this," explained Stoltzfus.

The markets regained all of the day's losses by Friday, leading Stoltzfus to emphasize the strong fundamentals that he says will ultimately drive stocks higher.

"The market ultimately goes with the economy," he explained. "You've got a global economic recovery that becomes less deniable on a quarterly basis, if not on a weekly and monthly basis, and then in the U.S. the economy looks sustainable."

Stoltzfus actually made the case that the economic outlook is so strong, in fact, that the so-called Trump rally was actually "really more of the market recognizing that it could move higher based on fundamentals."

In other words, the President's policy proposals, including his highly-anticipated tax reforms, were actually adding on to what was already a strong set of market fundamentals, and not the main cause of the rally.

The strategist sees the S&P 500 Index climbing up to 2,450, almost 3 percent from Friday's trading levels.