War Room Charts
Quick Updates, Time to nibble, or more pain ahead?
I thought it would be useful to put together some charts and thoughts after quite a tumultuous few days that have caused quite a VaR shock. The 2026 buy-and-hold portfolio reacted very well (white line below vs SPX and NQ) as hedges performed on Monday, leaping the YTD performance above 10%. Today’s Performance, however, is not reflected and estimated to be down 1%, which is roughly in line with indices at the time of writing.
Tuesday, in many ways, was the real VaR shock, as I’m sure many have thought of their “hedges” working better for a war scenario. The mental lesson is not to expect things to work as expected when entering a war scenario. I had to learn that lesson this time around. The Swiss Franc (admittedly with some intervention noise) fell hard, and so did the JPY. Gold performed on Monday but then got whacked on Tuesday, and Bonds, of course, performed a dramatic U-Turn on Monday and more so on Tuesday after filling the void of a safety asset merely a week ago.
Cross-Asset volatility is ramping, but we are still miles away from where we were at liberation day levels last April, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
Let’s dig into more details.
