During a severe geopolitical crisis that spikes oil prices, the United States' self-sufficiency in energy, food, and water makes it a relative safe haven. Rather than simply de-risking, a strategic defensive move is to reallocate capital from more vulnerable regions like Europe and Asia to the U.S.

Major physical shocks (e.g., war, labor disruption) cause global assets to co-move indiscriminately, ignoring country-specific fundamentals. This creates opportunities for dispersion trades by identifying geographical discrepancies where assets are mispriced relative to their actual exposure to the shock.

In times of war, the market's direction is dictated more by geopolitical events and military strategy than by traditional financial metrics. Understanding a conflict's potential duration (e.g., a swift operation vs. a prolonged war) becomes the most critical forecasting tool for investors and risk managers.

Owning ten different tech stocks is not diversification; it's a concentrated bet on one economic outcome. A resilient portfolio includes assets that react differently to the same major stressors, like inflation, deflation, or a credit crunch. This requires holding a mix of equities, hard assets, commodities, and liquidity.

In an era of potential systemic collapse, the winning strategy is not to predict the exact future but to build resilience and optionality. This means avoiding single points of failure, prioritizing liquidity, questioning assumptions about market stability, and considering assets that hold value independent of the dollar.

Systematic models don't attempt to forecast unpredictable shocks like policy changes. Instead, they build portfolios with 'guardrails'—diversifying away concentrated macro risks like sector or country bets—to ensure resilience and avoid being badly damaged by any single event.

During a crisis, avoid the temptation to trade based on predictions of how events will unfold. Instead, use the market volatility to purchase pre-identified, resilient companies at better prices, accelerating your existing strategy rather than creating a reactive new one.

During unpredictable conflicts, the best strategy is not to make aggressive bets but to maintain light positioning. Chasing headlines is exhausting, and it's better to miss the first market move in exchange for greater certainty, even if a base-case scenario exists.

In a low-trust, balkanized world, the 'set it and forget it' investment model is obsolete. The new priority is resiliency over efficiency. This means optimizing for optionality and physical reality, and prioritizing assets that are not someone else's liability, as counterparties and systems can no longer be fully trusted.