4-29-25: Survival Techniques in a Confusing Market Year

by Jason Bodner

April 29, 2025

Survival is encoded into our DNA and affects everything we do at a deep subconscious level.

Some animals have wild ways of reacting to life-or-death situations. Opossums fake their death out of fright. They go full catatonic when threatened. A carpenter ant, when all hope seems lost, will suck in its abdomen and explode toxins out toward their predator – the ultimate self-destructive last act of defiance.

Eels use electricity. Skunks use odor. Humans, however, often don’t know what to do. Sometimes we lash out in an emotional rage. Other times we freeze in indecision. Most of the time we overthink the crisis.

Markets are a great arena for facing other, more serious, life-or-death situations. That’s because our emotions are so deeply entangled with our money. Anyone reading this knows that when portfolios go down, we logically think that’s a buying opportunity, but emotionally we feel defeated. We’re confused.

So far this year, we’ve been confused quite a lot of the time.

The headlines seem to contradict each other, sometimes within the very same minute. Trade deals are imminent, or tariffs are raised, depending on the time of day. Businesses are failing or poised for success.

Markets are just as turbulent, and seeing through the thick fog of uncertainty seems impossible. This wicked new form of volatility is unsettling, uncomfortable, and at the top of the minds of most investors.

Will the future be bleak or bright? Stormy or serene?

It’s hard to not act according to our emotions – by the heart or the gut – in stomach-churning situations like now, but I find that our emotions are a reactionary survival instinct, a relic of our evolutionary past.

It has never worked for me. In fact, decision making using my gut has almost always led me to lose.

When I look for answers, I look at unemotional data. I prefer analysis and letting history be a possible — even probable – guide to what might come next.