Money Matters: Staying Steady in Volatile Times

“Oil Jumps, Stocks Drop as Investors Grapple with Iran War’s Impact. Oil is at its highest level since July 2024. The S&P 500 is negative on the year.”

That’s from the New York Times, March 5th, 2026.

“U.S. stocks fell to their lowest level since May as investors fled for safety…The benchmark S&P 500 Index dropped 2.4% at 9:32 a.m., marking its fifth straight day of losses amid the escalating crisis.”

That second blurb is not from this week. It’s from Bloomberg the morning Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. The “escalating crisis” was tanks crossing a border in Eastern Europe.

Very different events, very similar news release.

We want to be clear about something first: we are not dismissing any of this. Wars are terrifying. Bombs, destroyed ships, families displaced from their homes. These events, and the emotions they elicit, are very real.

We would all prefer a world where none of this happens. But this also isn’t the first time we’ve been here. And each time we arrive, the anxiety feels identical to the last. In both circumstances the coverage is constant. Cable news is showing videos of explosions and people fleeing their homes.

The markets drop. The headlines intensify. And we start to hear some version of the same question from families we work with: "Should I be doing anything differently in my retirement account? "It’s a completely reasonable question. It’s also, almost always, the wrong one to be asking.

Here’s what is important to remember. In February 2022, at the height of the Russia-Ukraine panic, the S&P 500 was trading around $4,300. As of market close on Friday, March 6th, 2026, the S&P 500 closed at $6,740.

That’s nearly a 57% gain in four years, through a war in Europe, domestic political turmoil, a regional banking crisis, and more headlines than any of us can count.

That brings us to what we actually do for you. Our job is not to predict which country invades which, or when the next headline will crater markets for a week. No one can do that reliably. Our job is to build a plan that accounts for the fact that this happens, and has always happened, and then to help you stay in it when every instinct is telling you to get out.

That’s where the bucket strategy comes in. It’s the foundation of how we structure portfolios for clients who are both in or near retirement as well as clients who just started building their wealth, and it’s designed specifically for moments like this one. It separates money you need soon from money you don’t, which means a bad week in the market doesn’t have to become a bad decision about your future.