Jeff Benjamin at Daily Upside surveyed advisers at the midpoint of 2026 on how a hawkish Fed hold and the conflict with Iran were changing their outlook for the second half. The market had dropped about 8% in the month after the war started in late February, then gained nearly 17% from the late-March low.
My read was that the market dropped on the Iran news and recovered when earnings came back into focus. That whipsaw is the cost of admission for returns, and trying to dodge it is how people turn a paper loss into a permanent one. Selling into the February headlines and waiting for clarity would have meant missing most of the rebound, which is exactly the pattern that turns temporary declines into lasting damage.
What I am reminding clients is that a year with two or three scary headlines is a normal year, not a broken year. Geopolitical shocks, a Fed that talks tougher than it acts, an election season on the horizon: none of those are reasons to change a plan that was built to absorb them.
The practical work in a year like this is unglamorous. Rebalance on the swings, keep the cash bucket funded so no withdrawal has to be forced at a low, and let the portfolio do what it was designed to do.
Read the full article at Daily Upside →
