Stick to the basics.

When a major global catastrophe hits us, we become short-sighted. It’s natural. We’re so consumed with news, data, information and conversations about a war or an election or a natural disaster, that it’s impossible to be distant and impassionate. This is bad for investing.

Investing successfully – meeting or beating our return requirements (in our case this is 10-15% annualized) – requires us to be half-monk, half-sniper. We need to be distant, objective, and focused on the target, ready to pounce. Obviously, this is easier said than done. We, at The Buylyst, are still trying to achieve this. We’re getting closer.

Ultimately, we want to be SWAN investors – sleep-well-at-night investors. This requires us to keep our perspective sufficiently long-term, even in the face of any shenanigans Mr. Putin & Friends inflict upon the world. Long-termism helps us see through the seemingly endless tunnel of unnecessary human suffering and economic damage. Long-termism helped us stay invested through the 35% market crash in March 2020. Long-termism helps us remain optimistic. Long-termism helps us sleep well at night (as well as humanly possible in these horrific times).

The downside of long-termism, however, is that it requires us to have a worldview about the next 5, 10, 15 years. This requires us to connect the dots between economic, political, and on-the-ground data points, so we can form a reasonably realistic picture of the decade ahead. That’s risky because things can change on a whim. So, this worldview must be adjusted every now and then when extraordinary situations arise. Putin’s war is one such situation. Does it change our worldview (and hence our portfolio) for the decade ahead? That’s what this analysis is about.