Iran War: contrarian cynically optimistic perspective

0:00Welcome to the well-steady podcast. This is episode 512 today as March 12, 2026. I'm your host, John Pugliano. I'm also the founder and money manager at AvestableWelfth.com. Well, hey, I know the headlines are full of negativity about the war in Iran. Let me give you a contrarian, cynically optimistic viewpoint from my perspective. I think the overall price volume action is indicating that the market reaction is much more muted than the media narrative would have you believe. For example, yes, the price of oil, again, does go up on days there are major attacks. However, put that in perspective. On an inflation-adjusted basis, oil is much less than it's been during previous conflicts where we saw the spike, I mean, just I would go back to the financial crisis. Prior to that, 2007, I think we saw an oil

1:04spike of about $145 a barrel. Now, factor in, 18 or 19 years of inflation into that, and where would that put gasoline prices today? And beyond that, as I record this, stock market down, oh, you know, S&P down maybe 1.3% today alone. But on a year-to-date basis, right over the last three months, S&P's only down 2%. And from its all-time record high, you know, just three, four weeks ago, S&P 500 is down maybe four and a quarter percent. So yes, the markets are turbulent, and they should be. There's a major bombing campaign going on in an area of the world where 20% of the oil comes out of. But keep in mind, again, the majority of that oil is going to Asia, specifically China and India. And the counterintuitive part of that is that look at American chemical companies, which have been in a slum for probably

2:07three years, companies like Selenies, Dow Chemical. Some of those guys are up well into the double digits just over the last week. Higher oil and petroleum prices in Asia convert to more profits for U.S. companies. Also keep in mind my philosophy on long-term investing. Losses are limited, gains are infinite. Short-term things could potentially get a lot worse for the S&P 500, but you know what? Short-term they could also change on a dime. We don't know what kind of tweet they could come out of the White House that could totally change the situation. Yeah, so there will be short-term losses, but long-term the gains are infinite and let me give you a historical perspective. I want to remind you of the date 1968. Now I've talked about that. Oh, it's been a long time ago since I brought that up, but that's a formative year for me. Listen, I was a little

3:07kid back then, but things were so bad in the United States during that era that it's made a lifelong impression on me. Let me tell you what was going on in 1968. Our economy was in the tank. Our manufacturing companies were losing market share to the likes of Japan and Germany. We had a hot war going on in Vietnam, where our young men were getting slaughtered on a daily basis, and there was major protests and civil disobedience in the United States to protest that war. The elementary school that I went to would frequently have classes disrupted because people would call them bomb threats. And the civil disobedience was not just about the Vietnam war. We were in the midst of the civil rights movement, and there was a great deal of racial violence. I mean, we're talking about 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was assassinated,

4:11and the political parties were in turmoil. It was that year the Democratic National Convention in Chicago had a major riot, and problems were not just all with Vietnam or in the US. They extended to Europe. Today, people are concerned with the military action going on in Ukraine, but you know what, back then, the Soviet Union didn't have to wage a hot war because it could move with impunity across borders and was rapidly expanding not only into Eastern Europe, but really around the world. Keep in mind, in 1968, Soviet tanks just rolled across the Czechoslovakian border and took the country over. Now, I bring this up because most of you listening to this episode have probably never even heard of Czechoslovakia. For that matter, you may have not even heard of the Soviet Union. And that's the point. You see, despite the negative headlines, the threat

5:14of being in World War III with a nuclear war potentially coming from not only the Soviet Union, but from China because of our activity in Vietnam, all this going on in 1978, and yet, you fast forward to today, and not only does Czechoslovakia not exist, but the Soviet Union, the biggest threat of the era, isn't even an entity anymore. But you know what it is? Oh, there's Coca-Cola, an Exxon mobile, and Johnson, and Johnson, and IBM, and Boeing, and Caterpillar, Proctor and Gamble. I could list another probably 60 or more companies that were blue chip stocks trading in the S&P 500 in 1968 that are still blue chip S&P 500 stocks today. So all that negativity, all the problems, and I'm telling you, 1968 and that error moving

6:14forward for the next more than a decade, 15 years at least, they were bad times for the US in terms of civil disobedience, and politics, and economics, and global instability. But opportunities abounded, I mentioned these old legacy companies. How about the tech companies that didn't even exist back then, that are dominant today, from Microsoft to Google to Facebook to Nvidia, Netflix, Amazon, things that people couldn't have even imagined of in 1968. The fact of the matter is, if there were always be bad news, there is always going to be a crisis desure. That's how the media makes their money. They build wealth by promoting gloom and doom. But you as an individual, that's not how you build wealth. If you get distracted by the media

7:16negativity, you'll be blinded from seeing the opportunities that exist, and you won't realize that you are living in the most prosperous time in the history of humanity. Back in 1968, most people didn't see the opportunity that was right in front of them, just like people don't see it today. That's why only 5% of the population ever becomes financially independent. They focus on the negative instead of seeing and taking charge of the future opportunities. The good news is, it all comes down to you, and the actions you take to make the most of your God-given talents. Now, if you're still listening to this episode at this point, you may not yet be in that 5% but you at least have the potential, because all the naysayers quit listening, you know, 30 seconds in. So keep your chin up, ignore the headlines, and go make some money.