Down 25% and Doubling Down: Why I'm Not Panicking About the Middle East Crisis

Let me set the scene. It's March 2026. The Middle East is in the kind of turmoil that makes financial markets nervous, the kind of nervous that translates directly into red numbers across your portfolio dashboard. I opened WealthR this week and — well. It wasn't pretty.

Down approximately 25% on my investment portfolio. Not a paper cut. A proper gash.

And yet when my scheduled weekly investment pinged through on Thursday morning, I didn't cancel it. I didn't pause it. I didn't even really think about it. Because this is, somewhat paradoxically, exactly when pound cost averaging is supposed to shine. (Dollar cost averaging for any international readers — but let's be honest, we're doing this in sterling 😉).

This is not the first rodeo — thanks, Donald

Here's what's interesting. The last time my portfolio took a meaningful hit, it was also politically induced. The tariff malarky — Trump's on-again, off-again trade war chaos — sent markets skittering in a way that felt very dramatic at the time. Headlines shrieked. Twitter (or X, or whatever we're calling it) was full of armchair economists declaring the end of passive investing as we know it.

And then markets recovered. As they tend to.

Now we're back to a similar script, just with a different backdrop. The Middle East situation is serious — genuinely serious, in a way that matters for people and for energy markets and for global supply chains. I'm not trivialising the human cost of it. But from a pure markets perspective, we've seen this movie before. Geopolitical shocks cause sharp corrections. Sharp corrections cause panic selling. Panic selling creates opportunities for people who don't panic.

The irony is that Trump has inadvertently become one of the best teachers I've had in how not to react to market noise. His first trade war taught me patience. His second has become almost routine. At this point I have a Pavlovian response: Trump announces something, markets wobble, I check WealthR, I wince slightly, I do nothing different.

What pound cost averaging actually means when everything's red

Most explanations of pound cost averaging (PCA) describe the upside in good markets — you buy more units when prices are low, fewer when they're high, and your average cost per unit stays sensibly calibrated over time. Fine. All true.

But they don't always spell out what it feels like when markets drop sharply while you're doing it. It feels uncomfortable. Every scheduled investment during a downturn looks, on paper, like you're voluntarily walking into a burning building. You see the numbers going down. You're adding money to the pile. It takes a specific kind of faith in the long-term.

That's the quiet superpower of a regular investment strategy during turbulent times. You're not trying to call the bottom. You're not timing anything. You're just consistently buying, and when the market gives you a discount, you take it without even trying.

My portfolio is down 25% right now. But the units I bought last Thursday cost me considerably less than they did in January. When this recovers — and based on three years of experience plus a reasonably long view of market history, I believe it will — those units bought during the chaos will have performed best of all.

The three-year picture nobody's looking at

Here's something I find genuinely useful about tracking in WealthR: I can look at my actual numbers over three years, not just the last three weeks.

Right now, in March 2026, the dashboard looks rough. Red numbers. A net worth chart that's taken a noticeable dip. If I'd only started tracking this year, I'd be feeling pretty miserable about it.

But I've been logging monthly figures since 2023. And the three-year view? Still positive. Still meaningfully positive. The dip is real — it's right there on the chart, clearly visible as a drop from recent highs — but it's also clearly a dip within a longer upward trend. That context is everything.

This is why I keep banging on about consistent tracking. It's not just about knowing your current number. It's about having the historical data to give the current number context. A 25% drop looks catastrophic in isolation. Within a three-year chart that's still positive overall? It looks like what it is: a rough few weeks in a longer journey.

The notes feature is genuinely underrated right now

One of my favourite things to do in WealthR during periods like this is add notes to my monthly entries. It sounds small, but it's become one of the most valuable habits I have.

This month's note is going to read something like: "Portfolio down ~25% — Middle East tensions + broader market nervousness. Still adding weekly. Still not selling. Will be interesting to look back on this."

And then in six months, or a year, or three years — I'll scroll back and read it. I'll see exactly what was going on, how I felt about it (spoiler: cautiously calm), and what the numbers did next.

It's the same reason I have a note from early 2025 that says something like: "Trump tariff chaos — everything red, held positions." That note now sits below a recovery that made holding the right call. Having the context written down turns hindsight into something genuinely instructive.

Not everything in the notes has to be market-related, either. I have notes that say things like "stag do in Edinburgh — spent approximately one arm, one leg, questioned several life choices." Or "wedding season strikes again — budget absolutely obliterated." Those months where your net worth inexplicably goes backwards despite having a decent month at work? Usually there's a social event to blame. The notes make it human. They remind you that life happens alongside the numbers, not separately from them.

Why I'm doubling down (not just staying put)

I want to be precise about something. I'm not just holding. I'm actively increasing my position during this period where my confidence in the long-term thesis is, if anything, higher than usual.

The businesses I'm invested in haven't fundamentally changed because of geopolitical tension. Their earnings potential, their moats, their dividend histories — none of that has shifted materially because of the current situation. The prices have fallen. The value, as best I can estimate it, has not fallen by anywhere near the same amount.

That's not blind optimism. It's the same logic Warren Buffett has articulated better than I ever could: be greedy when others are fearful. I'm not Warren Buffett. But I understand the concept well enough to keep my weekly investment going when everything looks terrible and the news is shouting at me to stop.

What does "recovery" actually look like from here?

I genuinely don't know exactly when or how fast markets recover from this. Anyone who claims to know is either lying or selling something. What I do know:

• Historical precedent is broadly encouraging. Major geopolitical shocks — including genuine conflicts, oil crises, and political upheaval — have tended to be recovered from within months to a few years, not decades.
• My time horizon is long. I'm not planning to liquidate my portfolio in the next two years. A 25% dip that recovers over 18 months is not a crisis for someone investing on a 20-year view.
• The maths of pound cost averaging works in my favour right now. Every week I invest at depressed prices is a week I'm building a lower average cost basis. When recovery comes, those weeks will look good.
• Panic selling crystallises losses. Right now, those red numbers are unrealised. The moment I sell, they become real. I have no intention of making them real.

The WealthR view: seeing the whole picture

I'll be honest — without tracking, I think this period would feel much worse. The human brain is not naturally good at holding a three-year perspective when the current week's numbers are red. We're wired to feel losses more acutely than equivalent gains, and the news cycle does nothing to counteract that.

What WealthR gives me is the antidote: the actual numbers, in chronological order, with context. I can see the dip. I can also see the three years before it. I can see the months I lost money at weddings and recovered the following month. I can see the trend that exists underneath the noise.

I added my figures this month. Red-tinted, honest, fully recorded. The portfolio is down. The ISA contributions are still going in. The monthly log is up to date. The notes are written. And in a year's time — maybe less — I fully expect to look back at March 2026 the way I look back at that tariff chaos from a year ago: as a period I held through, invested through, and came out the other side of in a better position than if I'd done what the news was implicitly telling me to do.

That's the whole strategy. Keep logging. Keep investing. Don't let the noise change the plan.

The portfolio will recover. It always has. And when it does, I'll have the charts to prove I didn't flinch.