If I had been building up positions over the past several weeks, would I have felt entirely comfortable doing so? Probably not, judging by the headlines.
Geopolitical tensions. Economic uncertainty. Enough reasons to send most investors running for the exits or at least hiding under the desk. Yet stocks have continued to advance, with plenty of volatility along the way.
This is precisely why I do not base investment decisions on headlines. The risks are real but the relationship between what we read in the news and how markets actually behave is far less predictable than the financial media would have us believe. If headlines were a reliable trading signal, we would all be retired by now.
Waiting for everything to look safe often means paying a much higher price to get in. By the time the picture feels comfortable, much of the move has usually already happened.
That does not mean buying blindly or ignoring the risks. It means having a strategy, understanding what you own, and being prepared for the inevitable ups and downs. I run a number of models from conservative to aggressive with different levels of volatility. They do not all feel the same in a week like this and they are not meant to. The point is to have something you can actually stay invested in.
The market rarely gives us the comfort of perfect clarity before it moves.