Our first article with this title was written on March 2, 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.
https://mingassociates.com/articles/war-geopolitics-and-the-economy/
Geopolitical events are serious. They affect economies, energy prices, and people’s lives in very real ways. From an investment perspective, though, it is important to separate what feels urgent from what has historically mattered most over time.
In our January newsletter, we wrote that investing is not just about choosing investments. It is about making sound decisions over long periods of time, especially when markets are volatile and emotions are tested.
That message has already proven relevant in 2026. Since January, markets have moved back and forth with concerns around inflation, interest rates, geopolitical tensions involving Iran, and rising oil prices, which affect nearly everything we consume.
When these events lead to short term declines, they can create a renewed sense of urgency to “do something.” In those moments, our role is to slow the decision making process down.
Markets are forward looking. Prices tend to adjust faster than emotions do. By the time uncertainty feels highest, markets have often already reflected it.
As Ben Carlson notes, these events can influence markets in the short term, but they have not been the primary driver of long-term returns. He points to events like the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the invasion of Iraq as examples markets have worked through over time (he also shares good chart showing annualized returns post geopolitical crisis).
In a separate article, Carlson points out that “noise (headlines) is what makes financial markets possible,” meaning it is never going away; therefore, the question then becomes how to deal with it.
As he puts it, you can “either learn to live with it or focus your attention elsewhere.”
He shares the example of Hall of Fame NFL coach Tony Dungy, whose philosophy was intentionally simple. Follow a repeatable process. The challenge was not the system itself. It was sticking with it in the biggest moments.
As Dungy observed, players trusted the system most of the time, but “when everything was on the line, that belief broke down.”
That idea applies directly to investing.
It is not just about having a plan. It is about having a process you can rely on, especially when uncertainty is highest and it feels hardest to do so. This is one of the reasons we emphasize diversification.
Rather than trying to predict which events will matter most, a diversified portfolio is built with the understanding that uncertainty, including geopolitical risk, is always part of the environment.
That means these risks are not something we ignore. In fact it’s quite the opposite, they are something we plan for with disciplined, diversified portfolios.
Source:
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2026/03/ignoring-the-noise-is-impossible/
