Preview of what we’ll cover today:

🌍 Market Reaction: How the Iran conflict is impacting markets and energy prices

😬 Investor Emotions: Why fear and uncertainty lead to poor decisions

📈 Long-Term View: Markets historically recover—and often create opportunity

📉 Slow Decline: Why this “death by a thousand cuts” feels worse than it is

📊 War & Markets: What history shows about investing during conflict

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More About This Episode:

When global conflict makes headlines, it’s natural to wonder what it means for your money. In this episode, Ryan breaks down how markets are reacting to the ongoing conflict in Iran and what investors should be paying attention to right now. While volatility and rising energy costs can create concern, the bigger picture often tells a very different story. Ryan reminds us that short-term headlines don’t always change long-term outcomes.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Market Reaction to the War in Iran

2:02 – Emotional Impact on Investors

2:55 – A Short Dip or a Recession?

5:34 – Slow & Controlled Market Decline

7:14 – History of Markets During War

8:49 – AI Potential Jobs Loss & Investments (Preview)

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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 another edition of the pilots advisor. And today, our focus, once again, kind of turns to what’s happening in the markets in relation to what we’ve seen with the war in Iran and the conflict that’s happening really all throughout the Middle East now, as more countries have been kind of, you know, roped into what’s going on. I’m Walter Storholt. Welcome to the show alongside, of course, Ryan Fleming of pilots advisor, and Ryan looking for your perspective here. Obviously, it’s tough watching again. We’re going to kind of narrow our focus to the market reaction and the financial side of the fallout from the war, not touching as much on the war itself, but it’s just from that financial perspective, and that’s frustrating seeing the markets kind of continue to slide and sputter and the cost of energy and things like that going up. I’m sure you’re getting questions from folks, or maybe people starting to feel a little bit more concerned now that we’re several weeks into this thing, rather than it being so fresh the first time we talked about it.

Ryan Fleming  00:57

Yeah, I find it very frustrating just, you know, I watch the markets daily for obvious reasons. And you know, as you see the market continue to slide. It is frustrating, but I got to, you know, once again, always keep in perspective. This time is not different. The market will recover. And really what it is, it’s a short term opportunity, short term opportunity to buy the dip. I don’t know if we buy today or you wait a week and it’s down farther. I mean, nobody knows, and the market is unpredictable, but the only people that it really, really hurts when you want to see those bigger numbers, is those in retirement that are actually taking income. And even then, it doesn’t really hurt them if it’s not a sustained down period. I mean, if it’s only down for a couple months, what is that one or two income payments. So it’s not huge, but the sustained downward trend for somebody in retirement is is of issue, but for long term investors even, I mean, regardless of if it’s a 20 year time horizon or a five year time horizon, really, all it is is an opportunity for you to buy more shares at a lower price.

Walter Storholt  02:01

How hard is that, mentally, though, for your clients to kind of get their heads around? I would imagine that this is an easier said than done kind of thing, because when the markets are falling, people get nervous and scared.

Ryan Fleming  02:12

No, absolutely. And it’s emotions. I mean, especially when it’s tied to a war conflict, right? Yeah, and that’s the hardest part with investing, is taking the emotion out of it. You know, investors make those short term emotional decisions that are is normally the wrong thing to do, and we like to see in that, that all time high number when we look at our accounts and we log in and, and this is one of those cases where just don’t look at it. I mean, there is a war going on. There’s an energy crisis right now. You know, in the US. I mean, we’re supposed to be energy independent, but because of all the other countries and the worldwide, you know, oil distribution, it affects the markets. It affects everything. And the market doesn’t like unknowns. And right now we have unknowns, and that’s the problem,

Walter Storholt  02:55

I guess. You know, this was supposed to be a quick operation, and the definition of quick, obviously, can be spun in different ways. It can mean different things to different people, whether it’s a week or would a month or two be considered still quick versus obviously a 20 year occupation, thing that we hopefully don’t get into here, like past wars. I know that’s a concern of a lot of folks. So some of that concern is like, all right, is this a temporary dip, or are we gonna with a geopolitical conflict like this? Are we gonna slide into recession territory? Haven’t heard too much buzz about people being worried about it getting that bad quite yet. But is there a tipping point or something that you watch for where you might even change your thought process of like, all right, instead of this just being like, hey, let’s buy this dip temporarily in the market. Let’s readjust. Let’s refocus, because this is going to be a lot longer, pain wise, than maybe we initially anticipated.

Ryan Fleming  03:48

Well, and it’s totally unpredictable. I mean, I have my opinions, but once again, the market’s unpredictable. No clue to geopolitical issues what could happen. What I do know is we watch the ACM by line and let the algorithm, unemotionally do its analysis, and we’re hitting points where we’re reducing exposure and getting small cash positions, which may start to increase here if the market keeps sliding historically. What happens with that? Well, we just get some dry gunpowder on the sidelines, and then once the market hits the bottom and is actually turning to where the analytics show that things are better. Will we buy back in at that lower amount and try to hit the gas and leverage our way out? 2020, 2021, I mean, the market returns were like 16% both of those years, and using the byline, we got 40% and 39% so it could create opportunity. You know, a lot of times when you have volatility like this. It creates some opportunity there. And so we got to focus on those things and see what’s going on. And what I always try to say is, rather than us try to predict the market, let the analytics, let the numbers tell us what to do, because we have a system in place that’s unemotional, and the system works because it’s unemotional. So you got to. So you got to follow the system, even though, you know the the temptation is to get emotional and be like, I don’t want my money in the market or whatever. But two things to think about, when the market moves, and I’m talking in the upward direct direction, it happens pretty quick, and you don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines, that’s number one. And then number two, it’s, it’s going to recover. I mean, it always has. I mean, there’s never, I don’t care if this time is different. I mean, the market has, has always recovered, and you just don’t want to miss it. So just just staying focused on those things is what I try to do. If you

Walter Storholt  05:34

really look at the markets and you zoom out a little bit, I mean, they’re certainly not in panic mode, right, at least at the time of our recording today, like there’s been some, some dip in a downward trend. But by no means are we in market panic mode at this point.

Ryan Fleming  05:49

Not at all. I mean, it’s been a slow, steady, calm sell off, you know, where it’s down for a couple days and then it was up for a couple days, and not, you know, we didn’t erase all those losses and get back to even yet, but it but the market has really handled this in a in a very slow, controlled manner. I don’t think there’s, yeah, I don’t think there’s panic selling going on right now. I don’t think that at all. I think there’s, as the unknowns continue on, you know, because the war has gone on for a couple weeks now. It just, it’s just been a slow slide. Yeah.

Walter Storholt  06:22

I mean, the NASDAQ this time, approximately last year in 2025 was much lower than we are right now. So we’ve got a long way to go before we have some sort of panic to where we’ve lost a whole year of gains and those kinds of big concerns that people are often worried about, you know, losing an entire year or more and just kind of all of that wealth wiped out well,

Ryan Fleming  06:42

and I think that’s why it’s important to learn lessons historically, wars are very profitable for the market. So remember that, if you look at historical data, every time we have some sort of international conflict going on, the market does very well. Another lesson to learn. 2025 we had massive sell offs because of tariffs. If you stayed in the market, you would have got, you know, 1617, 18% gains. So all those tell you to stay the course. And I think that’s the most important thing. I mean, if you’re a long term investor, stay the course. This is, this is just going to be a blip on the radar.

Walter Storholt  07:14

Your thought process is interesting, especially when you look at again, kind of what the market has done, when you talk about it being slow and methodical in a way that can be more painful, right? You almost like, one or two bad days that are dramatic well, like, oh, well, at least they’re over, and then, like, maybe you stabilize and start coming back up. And people are just like, well, that that hurt, but this one’s been so methodical, like, you’re just death by 1000 cuts. Maybe some people are starting to feel it just that, that half a percent every day, just sort of that could almost be more painful, just because it seems like so many red days, perhaps in a row, or way more red days than green days. But again, you zoom out, look at the total picture, and that’s where you got to kind of eliminate that emotion. No matter how it feels. You said you have your opinions, but the market it doesn’t care about your opinion.

Ryan Fleming  08:00

There’s nothing we could do to change it. And I think that’s the most frustrating part. Like, nobody likes it when the market’s going down, but it, but it is a buying opportunity. And, yeah, you bring up death by 1000 cuts or, or, what do they always talk about, where you put the frog in the boiling water and he doesn’t notice until it’s too late.

Walter Storholt  08:20

Yeah, you put him in a hot in hot water, he jumps right out. And if it’s slowly brought to the boil, he doesn’t realize it. Yeah.

Ryan Fleming  08:27

So that’s the way I look at the market right now. You know, we’ll get this out to listeners, but I think, you know, there’s, there’s bigger fears that we could talk about, which would be a perfect lead in Walter and I are going to do a couple shows on AI and what that looks like, and how that’s going to affect the world. I mean, are we all going to not have jobs in five years, or the robots going to kill us all? I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll have fun talking about it.

Walter Storholt  08:48

Yeah, we got a couple of good AI episodes coming up, which was kind of like the big story in the world before the war started, which is why we had it on the agenda to talk about, and kind of pushed it back a little bit. But yeah, we’re going to dive into the AI topic and approach it from two different angles. Look at it from that kind of job standpoint. For those of you who are still working, obviously still flying, I don’t know how far, I think we’re pretty far away from probably no pilots in the cockpit. Ryan, hopefully that that’ll be a scary barrier to cross, right if they ever have, like the self driving car thing, you know?

Ryan Fleming  09:20

But it’s definitely coming. I mean, it’s going to happen, and I think cargo carriers will happen first, but whether or not people want to get on an airplane without an actual pilot there, I think we’re pretty far off from that. But that’ll be another good, healthy conversation that we have coming up on the next podcast in the future.

Walter Storholt  09:36

We’ll also have another episode where we dive a little bit more into the AI side of the markets. AI and your investments AI, and how you make decisions when it comes to retirement. Hey, even just investing in AI will hit it from all of those kinds of angles as well. So come back and join us for those episodes in the meantime. Lesson for today, stay the course. Keep your emotions in check. If you need help keeping those emotions in check. Fact, that’s where it really works to talk to an advisor like Ryan and go through your portfolio, or just have somebody talk you off the ledge, if that’s what you need. Ryan, so

Ryan Fleming  10:09

bye, bye, bye.

Walter Storholt  10:13

So if you got questions, get in touch. We’ve got contact information in the description of today’s show so that you can find it easily, and we’ll talk to you again next time right back here on the pilot’s advisor. Ryan, thanks so much.

Speaker 1  10:29

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