Remember when everyone was doom-scrolling about the Iran war and oil prices? Yeah, that was fun. But here’s the thing about markets—they’re basically the financial equivalent of a golden retriever. They panic, they recover, and then they’re ready to party again like nothing happened.
Enter Ryan Detrick, Carson Group’s chief market strategist, who apparently never got the memo that he was supposed to panic. While other Wall Street types were issuing bearish warnings and predicting apocalypse, Detrick kept his bullish stance locked in. And guess what? He’s looking pretty smart right now.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq just hit fresh all-time highs this week after Iran announced the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” for business. Translation: one of the biggest geopolitical headaches keeping investors up at night just got resolved. The market’s response? A relief rally that sent stocks soaring back to record territory.
Here’s Detrick’s secret sauce, and it’s actually pretty elegant: “It’s not about good or bad, it’s about better or worse.” Sounds simple, right? But it’s the kind of wisdom that separates the strategists who make money from the ones who just make noise.
Think about it. The market only pulled back about 8% from pre-war levels at its March lows. For a geopolitical crisis of this magnitude, that’s basically the market’s way of saying, “Yeah, this sucks, but it’s probably not going to end civilization.” Markets are weirdly good at adapting to whatever chaos gets thrown at them. They’re like financial cockroaches—resilient and impossible to kill.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Detrick expects the bull run to keep rolling, and he’s betting on a “one-two punch” to fuel it: de-escalation (check) and earnings season (coming soon). Q1 earnings are about to kick off in earnest, and if companies deliver strong results—which Detrick expects—we could see this rally get some serious legs.
The strategist’s take? “We do think that this bull market is not over yet, and we think it’s going to be justified again this earnings season. It’s a global bull market, and I don’t want to fight that.”
Translation: The bears fumbled the ball, and now the bulls are back in control. While everyone else was panicking about oil shocks and geopolitical meltdowns, Detrick stuck to his framework and let the market do what it does best—adapt and move forward.
The lesson here isn’t that geopolitical crises don’t matter. They do. But they also don’t have to derail a bull market if you’ve got the right perspective. Sometimes the best investing strategy is just remembering that markets are remarkably resilient, and that “better or worse” beats “good or bad” every single time.
