War in the Middle East and the spike in oil prices have seen markets really get whacked this past week. We see all the headlines and how the situation on the ground is changing day to day. 

Surprisingly, markets held up relatively well into last week, when it seemed investors suddenly realised this war isn’t going to be resolved quickly. And that’s the thing about stock markets – a lot of the time they price in the “best case” scenario.

Likewise, on the way down, they can price in a “worse case” scenario that rarely comes to pass. However, throughout this, our job is to stay invested.

That’s critical because if we sell out, we crystallise losses. And the data that are out there? They are overwhelmingly in favour of us just staying put. Doing nothing.

That can feel counter-productive in a scenario such as this, where every “strategist” and their mother is telling us what we should be “rotating” into. But the truth is, all of it is absolutely irrelevant to your long-term wealth-building plan. It’s best ignored.

The tempting thing, or what we’d think would be the smart move, would be to sell everything, sit on cash, and wait for the dust to settle. But that’s actually going to cost you far more than the volatility itself.

This below chart from Ned Davis Research and Hartford Funds illustrates that beautifully. It tracks a $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 Index over 29 years (1996 to 2025).

Sources: Ned Davis Research, Morningstar, and Hartford Funds

If you had just stayed fully invested throughout, and done literally nothing, your $10,000 would have grown to $192,167 over that 29-year period.

But if you’d sold and ended up missing just the 10 best trading days? You end up with 56% less; just $85,490 in comparison. Simply because you were on the sidelines. Trying to time a market entry and exit is fiendishly difficult and doing it consistently? Nearly impossible.

Miss the 20 best days and you're just under $50,000. Miss 30, and you're left with $31,123 – barely a sixth of what patient investors earned.

The fact is that the best days are always close to some of the worst ones in markets. That’s just how they function. So when fear peaks and everyone is selling, that's typically when the sharp rebounds happen.

It’s so, so boring (we hear it all the time) but it’s true; time in the market beats timing the market. Every single time.

We don’t actually lose to markets because our own worst enemy when we invest is ourselves. Ensuring we don’t let our emotions make financial decisions for us is critical. 

And it’s something we need to keep in mind in the weeks and months ahead as it’s anyone’s guess how the current situation will be resolved. Try to ignore the “noise”, continue to dollar cost average, and stay focused on your long-term asset allocation plan.

If you’re using the DBS yuu card, you might be worried about the fact that you have no idea how much you’ve spent on it so far this month.

And that’s a legit worry because you need to hit $800 minimum spend across four yuu merchants to unlock that much-sought-after 10 miles per dollar rate.

Thankfully, the yuu app does actually have a tracker so you can see how much you’ve spent so far this month and at how many partners too.

Finding it isn’t the easiest thing, though. Within the yuu app, you have to go down to “Discover Promotions by Brand” and find the DBS logo.

By clicking on that, you’ll then be taken into the page where you can see your bonus eligibility spending for your DBS yuu card (or cards if you hold both the Visa and Amex).

Do note that the spending might take three or four days to register on the tracker, particularly with merchants such as GoJek.

But it’s definitely a useful tracker for ensuring we’re on track to hit that minimum spend across the four merchants.

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