Recent headlines about global conflict and market volatility can make investing feel uncertain. When emotions rise and news cycles move quickly, it’s easy to feel pressure to react.
In this video, Michael Brady of Generosity Wealth Management shares a timeless perspective on navigating moments like these. Drawing on decades of experience, Mike explains why emotional control and discipline are two of the most important ingredients for long-term financial success.
Markets will always experience ups and downs. Geopolitical events will always occur. The key is not predicting every headline, but building a thoughtful plan and maintaining the perspective to stay on course.
Mike also shares a helpful reminder: intra-year market declines are normal, even in years that ultimately end positive. Long-term investing is about progress over time — not reacting to every moment of uncertainty.
At Generosity Wealth Management, the goal is to align wealth with purpose and possibility, helping clients live well today while preparing confidently for the future.
Transcript
Hi there. Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management, a comprehensive full-service financial services firm headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. Although I am in Michigan right now, if you’re ever wondering what my childhood backyard looks like, that is it. My mother’s in assisted living. She moved there over the summer, and I’m doing the last little bit in my childhood home. My parents have had this house for 50 years, and I’m helping do the last little bits in order to put it on the market and close that chapter.
I did a video about a week ago that was going to go in this newsletter. But it did not get sent out because I’m replacing it with this video. While we were editing the newsletter, the Iran–Middle East conflict came up, and I thought I’d be a little more timely and remind you of certain lessons that are tried and true.
One of them is that we have emotional control at all times. If you want to be successful in the financial world and reach your financial goals, it is my opinion that one of the first things you do is have emotional control. Remember that the media—whether it’s print, scrolling, or TV—often tries to elicit emotion from you, not necessarily inform you. If you’re getting excited or upset, check yourself.
One thing we can do is ask, “How am I feeling right now? What’s causing that? If it’s not helping me, stop doing it.” It’s just that simple.
The other is discipline. Have the discipline to know what our plan is and move towards it. Periodically I hear people say, “Well, we’re obviously at a high.” First off, when the word “obviously” is in anything in our industry, you know it’s not obvious. But the question is, are we at a high in the unmanaged stock market indexes? The answer is, we might be at a high from where it was 5, 10, and 20 years ago. I certainly hope it’s at a low in comparison to where it will be 5, 10, and 20 years from today. That’s all that really matters, because we can’t live in the past, but we certainly can live, and we will hopefully live, the future. Why else would we have investments if we didn’t believe that they would be higher 5, 10, and 20 years from now?
Up on the screen is something that I like to remind people of: the numbers below the X axis are the intra-year decline, and it is normal for there to be declines throughout the year. It doesn’t mean that the end of the year ends negative. It is normal for there to be declines.
Someone asked me the other day, “Mike, your videos are not very technical.” And my answer is yes, that’s by design. If you want technical, you can go to any business news channel and get that technical analysis. You can open up print media or a business magazine or newspaper and have all kinds of technical analysis. Twenty or thirty years ago, I could wow you with that information and charts. Today it’s all free and available. But what is more important than all of that technical data is what it actually means. What are the ingredients for success that they might not be talking about in the media or that you might not see others talking about in your neighborhood or community? That’s what I’m here to present: what I believe, and my beliefs have come from decades of experience in discipline and emotional control.
Know your liquidity, have your duration in mind, and then execute properly. Money that you need in two weeks is certainly different from money that you need in five, ten, or twenty years. Even if you’re in your 60s or 70s, we hope that you will have many five- and ten-year timeframes going forward.
I want to bring us back to the fact that geopolitical events will always happen. The market will always go up and down historically. The way I believe is that if you’re so averse to risk or so afraid of any kind of decline, you’re not going to get the ups. It’s three steps forward, maybe two steps back. Three steps forward, two steps back, but you’re progressing along a path. It’s no different than if you’re so afraid of a relationship—friendship or romantic—of being hurt that you’ll never find true love. It’s the same when trying to reach your financial goals. We need to mitigate risk; we can’t eliminate it.
We have to ask, “What’s our duration?” Are the investments we’re in consistent with what we want to do? Can I keep my emotional control, and am I disciplined when things happen that I know are going to happen, like the market going up and down or geopolitical issues or things in the news or in our own country? These things have always happened, and they will continue to happen. How am I going to react?
Is the purpose of my money to make me happy? I would say yes, to live your life so you’re not a burden on others. Your purpose and possibility is really what we talk about—Generosity Wealth Management aligns wealth with purpose and possibility. If that’s the case, then let’s get immune to those external things and stay with our plan. Be peaceful and calm in sometimes non-peaceful situations in the world, but we can be our own oasis.
So, Michael Brady, 303-747-6455. Give me a call or send me an email if you ever feel like you want to talk about something. Let me know, and we can have that communication. Have a great rest of the day, great week. Bye.