MacroTides' Welsh: Events in Iran won't derail the economy or the market

Jim Welsh, the strategist behind the Macro Tides and Weekly Technical Review newsletters, says that the market's underlying strength won't stop a short, fast decline of as much as 7%, but it will provide strong resistance to a full-blown correction or bear market. Welsh notes that people fear that the economy will be severely disrupted because they remember oil shocks creating recessions in the 1970s, but oil prices have much less ability "to tip the economy into recession now," so he thinks the impact of current events will be less than most investors fear. Welsh has been forecasting a secular bear market — a long reversal of fortune for the stock market — for a few years now, and he still sees one coming, but he doesn't think that starts until "the next recession" creates a situation that stalls growth and disrupts the market.

Amid all of those market worries and concerns, Ryan MacDonald, portfolio manager for the Bluerock Private Real Estate Fund, says that private real estate is "uniquely boring, in a good way." MacDonald, who also serves as chief investment officer at Bluerock, says that three painful years of interest rate changes have driven values down to where they are attractive. "Entry point is the single biggest driver of future value for private real estate returns" and, on an inflation-adjusted basis, the market is now approaching valuation levels "not seen since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis."

Jaime Seale discusses the 2026 home renovation trends survey from Clever Real Estate, which showed that half of all homeowners say their home is facing necessary repairs or renovations that they can't afford given current economic and personal conditions. Nearly six in 10 homeowners have nothing saved for emergency repairs , which is particularly alarming because 85 percent of homeowners spent money last year on an unplanned repair.