That wasn’t so bad, was it? A year ago, Jay Powell kicked a promising Wall Street rally in the teeth by warning that the war on inflation wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Today shows that he’s run out of scary things to say.

After all, we’re all a year older and less innocent. The euphoric excesses of the pandemic bubble are a year farther away. If Powell wants to make investors nervous now, he needs fresh material to get under our skin.

Stocks took a step back yesterday on just that scenario. Wall Street got burned last year when Powell flipped the script. Nobody wanted to live through a repeat of that experience.

But today didn’t flip the script one bit. The Fed stuck to its existing narrative. Inflation needs to go back down to 2% a year. Interest rates will not go down until inflation is where it needs to be . . . and might even creep up a little more.

We knew all that. It wasn’t scary or shocking. The rate futures market didn’t even blink. And once Wall Street got a minute to blink and review the situation, the buyers came back to erase most of yesterday’s losses. They sold the dread. They bought the relief.

And I think there’s a lot of relief to buy. Relief from the bond market. From the economy itself. And even from the Fed.

The psychology is simple. Nobody likes to endure pain, in the market or outside it. If it looks like something painful is coming our way, we’ll generally swerve to get out of the way or even reverse course . . . running away. In the market, that retreat means running for the sidelines, cashing out of stocks in order to get liquid and escape the encroaching pain point.

But that’s only a sound strategy when there’s actually something bad coming over the horizon. When it’s just a cloud, the people who sell out to get away need to buy back in. Those of us who held our position only lost a little time and maybe felt a little pressure.

People who sold last year’s Jackson Hole speech and fled the market until the Fed declared victory are still waiting on the sidelines. They’ve missed out on a reasonable rally. The rest of us are up 8% in the S&P 500 alone, and a whole lot of individual stocks have bounced a lot more than that.

In that light, Powell’s speech last year was actually a buy signal. An 8% year is not great in the broad market, but it’s a whole lot better than what you would’ve made in bonds or cash. Stocks were the best place to be.

This year, I think it’s a stronger buy signal. The Fed has run out of new ways to scare us. Powell took his best shot and the rate curve did not change. Bond yields barely budged.

That’s it. Fear of this speech was worse than the actual speech. And when that happens, your investment strategy should not change. The stocks you owned last week are still as good as ever. The ones you’re buying now are still attractive.

And the stocks other investors dumped this week are now available at a discount.