April 24, 2026 - Investing Means Enduring Pain, Not Avoiding It

This week’s newsletter is simple: investing means enduring pain, not avoiding it. With war waging on in the Middle East markets have been on a rollercoaster. Whether its bonds, stocks, commodities, or crypto - it has been affected in the short-term by the conflict.

Why do people want to sell at the earliest sign of stress in the market? Oftentimes it has to do with a cognitive bias: their neighbor is selling their stocks so they have to sell, they read a headline that says the sky is falling so now is the time to get out of the market, or they think they can pick when the top of the market will be.

People want to avoid pain when it comes to their investments. Seeing their investments lose value hurts and it feels like a personal failing. They will sell their investments while they are still up and sit on the sidelines until the situation improves (hint: when one crisis ends another begins). Some will go so far the other way as to never sell a losing position because the feeling of taking an investment loss is too great.

Investing means enduring pain and enduring it for the long haul. Investing can take decades - not days, months, or even years. It takes a careful and disciplined strategy.

However, many people aren’t trained on this. We revert to our instincts when the headlines seem dire and the kneejerk reaction is to get out of the market and stay out.

I could provide enough research on the value of disciplined, long-term investing to fill a library. I don’t think any rational person at this point, with decades of academic research behind them, could reasonably argue against this approach.

But our biases are what hold us back. We feel like we have to go it alone - the main source of our financial news is from what we hear from neighbors, coworkers, news anchors, and Jim Cramer (don’t get me started).

I spend my time keeping clients in the game. Keeping them focused and confident that the plan we’ve made is the right path. The game is going on all around us and we can’t be on the sidelines.