Preview of what we’ll cover today:

🌍 Markets dislike uncertainty, but historically recover
📉 Corrections are normal (even 10–20% swings)
🧠 Emotional investing leads to costly mistakes
💵 Down markets can create opportunity
✈️ Perspective from a military and global standpoint

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More About This Episode:

Global tensions have escalated following the conflict in Iran, and investors are feeling the ripple effects. In this timely conversation, Ryan shares perspective on how markets typically respond to war, why uncertainty creates volatility, and why emotional decision-making can be costly. While headlines quickly shift from one crisis to the next, the core principles of investing remain the same: discipline, patience, and long-term thinking.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Intro

2:05 – Corrections, Tariffs & Staying the Course

3:26 – Behavioral Finance

4:42 – Military Perspective & Global Implications

5:59 – Final Thoughts

Resources:

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

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The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

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Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Walter Storholt  00:04

Hey, welcome to the pilots advisor. And we’ve got a bit of a timely episode today. The world has changed since we last recorded, Ryan, and I’m interested to get your thoughts, obviously, as to kind of what’s going on globally, impacts financially, questions that you’re maybe getting from pilots and clients trying to figure out what’s going on with the war, obviously, in Iran, and we’re trying to just get our first few days in the market of figuring out how kind of the rest of the financial world is responding to what’s happening on this global picture. It’s kind of one of those things we talk about all the time in the news and how it shapes and shifts things in our day to day lives, but kind of give us your take on how things are going right now?

Ryan Fleming  00:41

Yeah, the first thing I would like to say is my clients, actually, as a whole, have been pretty amazing so far. No panicking going on, which is great, because this is not a time to panic. Obviously, the markets do not like uncertainty. So what’s going on right now with the war effort? And also, I think a big question mark is, is energy costs. What’s going to happen with that? But if we look at historical data, the market tends after the initial unknowns. The market likes wars. The market tends to do well. When we have conflicts going on, it does create opportunities. There’s definitely winners and losers like anything else. But isn’t it amazing how one thing happens and now we’re not talking about AI anymore. We’re not talking about how that’s going to shake up the market.

Walter Storholt  01:28

Yeah, it’s like we only have enough focus for one or two major news stories at a time, and things, other things fall by the wayside, right?

Ryan Fleming  01:36

Yeah, this is not important anymore. Now, I do think that you know, the market is totally unpredictable. And those that tend to get out of the market or predict what’s going to happen in the market and go sit on the sidelines that, you know, the data suggests that’s where they’re going to hurt themselves, because not only are they going to maybe go there at the wrong time, but then you end up sitting out when the market has a correction, and when it does have a correction coming back, it happens really, really fast, and the tendency is to miss it. But the one thing I think about with this every year, we normally have a 10% correction, but we never know what that’s going to be. And last year it was the tariffs, you know, and I didn’t know the tariffs were going to do that, and it ended up being the fastest 20% correction in the last 75 years, but had you stayed the course, you would have gotten great returns last year, because it came all the way back from 20% down almost 18% up by the end of the year. So staying disciplined and unemotional definitely has benefits. But one thing I do know. I do know that the market will come back. It’ll recover, it’ll have all time highs, because it always does. And I know the market’s unpredictable, and one of the things we talk about all the time is not trying to time the market, but I do know that buying when the market’s down is a good thing. So I look at this as another opportunity. If you have some cash sitting on the sidelines, we’re getting a pretty good pullback today. This is a Tuesday, and after the embassy in Saudi Arabia’s hit the markets moving a little bit more today than it did yesterday. Monday, it was like, Okay, I see we got this conflict going on in Iran, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t too bad, as a matter of fact, it came back and was almost even for a while. The NASDAQ was even positive, but we’re definitely getting a sell off today. So anyway, that was my long diatribe of what I see going on, what opportunities are. What do you think Walter?

Walter Storholt  03:28

Well, it seems to me, if somebody’s feeling that fear, feeling that trepidation, as we go through this war and learn new things each and every day, what I’m hearing you say is, if anybody’s feeling that itch to sell or to try and time the market, those are the red flags and assigned to like, take a step back and let’s reevaluate how our emotions are impacting our decision making 100%

Ryan Fleming  03:50

and I love behavioral finance, because it’s one of the biggest things with investing, and you are your worst enemy. That human emotion right now is telling you I have to do something. This doesn’t feel good. I see the market selling off 2% I see my account balance going down, and it makes you feel like you have to do something right now, and that short term emotional decision is the exact wrong thing to do. So I know you feel it. I don’t like that. The market’s going down, but guess what? Right now, you just need to take a deep breath, relax if you’re not retiring for a while. This is amazing. Buy some more stuff while it’s lower. You know, play the long term game, but, but there’s so many studies about how people are too emotionally attached to their money to make prudent financial decisions, and then they make the exact wrong decision at the exact wrong time, and this is one of those times.

Walter Storholt  04:42

Yeah, absolutely. From a non financial planning standpoint, Ryan, I know, obviously your experience in the Air Force and being a pilot, and you know, so many people, not only in the Air Force, but other branches of the military. And you know, we’ve got a lot of folks deployed right now in an active engagement, and this is. A kind of a territory that, you know, we enter into every couple of years. But this one certainly feels very big, the biggest one, maybe in a while. So I’m sure you’ve got, kind of, from a non financial standpoint, a lot of people on your heart and your mind today,

Ryan Fleming  05:14

absolutely, I, you know, I felt like something like this was inevitable. There was a lot of activity going on. We’ve been moving assets to that area of the world for a while now. And I think that you know not to get into politics of it, but I think Iran is is a real threat. I mean, when you have a country that’s been saying Death to America for the last 47 years, it’s maybe time to do something about it. And unfortunately, I think their their their reaction by attacking all the countries around them is going to have very devastating effects for the country of Iran, but I hope that you know for the people, it’s moving the right direction.

Walter Storholt  05:52

Yeah, and certainly, we’ll be thinking about all of those who are deployed and under active engagement right now from the US military. Any other thoughts on what we’ve seen these last couple of days. Ryan is, you know, from a financial standpoint, weeks ahead, anything else on your mind?

Ryan Fleming  06:07

No, I want to get this out. We’ll try to get this turned around and out to our listeners as quickly as possible. You know, you already gave a shout out to our service members and all the sacrifice that they’re making there for our country. But I want to bring up Walter sacrifice. Walter has been battling a cold for like 14 days. He can barely hear right now. Finally got his voice back, and he wanted to. He was really thinking about wimping out from doing the podcast today, but he’s so tough. The level of sacrifice, Walter showed up today to get this message out to you guys, so I want everybody to make sure they pray for Walter. Give a little shout out to Walter for his sacrifice so we can get this, this short video, out to you guys. Please don’t panic. Stay the long course. Be unemotional. Everything will be okay.

Walter Storholt  06:55

If you have any remedies for clearing a clogged ear after 14 days, please let me know so I can go back to hearing well, appreciate you, Ryan, thanks for bringing a little levity to things and your perspective on the markets and just trying to keep a level head through the ups and downs that we’re having right now, and we’ll catch up with you again

Ryan Fleming  07:12

next week. Sounds great. Walter, once again, I appreciate your sacrifice, and I hope you feel better soon. Thanks.

Walter Storholt  07:17

We’ll see everybody soon, right back here on the pilots advisor. Thanks for tuning in

Speaker 1  07:25

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