Geopolitical risk rattling investors in global financial markets this morning. So, how should investors on edge prepare for increasing geopolitical tensions? Joining us now, we've got Alex Morris, FM Investments, CEO and CIO. Alex, good to have you here with us today. Just help us make sense of what we're seeing in the region as it is, of course, being evaluated through the lens of investors here this morning.

Yeah, certainly some terrible things happening across the world and, you know, investors should take note of that as we think about how do we position our portfolios, but just the overall theme of what's happening, right? Geopolitical tension is up. Things are getting less certain, not more certain. As a result, it's not the time to be taking outside risk. This is a great time to be looking back to your asset allocation and to be really processing how do you want to be positioned for when things go wrong, which is something we often talk about, but we actually rarely, seldom actually implement. So this isn't the time to be taking out leverage into the long end of a Bitcoin trade. This is a great time to be going back to basics and sticking to the asset allocation and trying to see past the next two or three years.

Worth noting, Alex, that this comes just after the S&P 500 hit its highest close since February 20th, which was just one day after the benchmark index most recently set a new record closing level. We were reporting on that on Yahoo Finance yesterday into and after the close here. And now you have this move off of those levels driven by, once again, more uncertainty internationally here. What is the risk that this actually spirals into something more large that investors also have to take into consideration?

Well, I think this is a reminder of what was always going on. Um, I suspect if you asked the Israeli High Command, they would tell you October 7th was a declaration of war and they've been at war for a long time. This is merely a new front. But as an, from an investor, we're looking at some other stats as well. We are going to hear from Jerome Powell later today. We don't expect to see any cuts, but I do think we are going to hear about softening some language and cuts are probably the only thing that are more certain as a result of this. The question is now when. It's not today. Will it be just after Jackson Hole? Will it be near the end of the year? We look at CPI that's going up, so the cost to consumers is going up. The producers are going down, which means that corporate margins are somewhat being squeezed. So we're starting to see other little cracks, and this is what the deterioration of the economy looks like. It's happening in slow motion, and Jerome Powell's almost schoolyard logic of, in January, of, let's just wait and see. Well, this is what the sea looks like. So now we're going to get an interesting opportunity for the Fed to actually try to engineer that soft landing. And the technocratic job they have to do in making that happen certainly gets much harder when political forces say cut rates now, cut them by 2%, and then on top of that, geopolitics seems primed to spike oil, which doesn't in fact inflation, but also just add net uncertainty to a market that was just starting to find its feet again.

You know, I wonder, has the profile of safe haven areas of the market changed dramatically? And the reason I ask that is because of where we're already seeing overcrowded trades within the market as of right now, both long positions and those who have kind of looked across the tech industry and the mag 7 and said, hey, that might be the new safe haven if we're just sitting in a position long-term anyway.

I think a lot of folks have made that trade for the last few years, certainly post-COVID. And it's probably a great place to be in that sense. If the, if you define safe haven as something that I could also call a safe haven in 1950, then maybe not. But practically, if what you want is that five-year over the horizon view of things, a tech stock, the mag 7, they're probably not going anywhere. Uh certainly you are going to see some volatility, you know, in certainly name like Boeing, the defense stocks that you showed earlier in the show, you're going to see some action there. So short-term profits to be made taking those types of risks, but long-term stability, we're still going to have our iPhones five years from now. Um and that's probably the one thing that we can count on.

Yeah, not if Sam Altman and Johnny Ive can say anything about it, but we will see what they put forth. Yeah, exactly. Alex, thanks so much for taking the time here with us today.

Thank you.