Resilience in Uncertainty

Somewhere in NYC or the Bay Area this week, a senior product manager opened a company email and learned that the role no longer existed. A couple of months of severance, accelerated vesting on the next tranche. Entirely insufficient against a $9,000 mortgage and a brokerage account that cannot be liquidated without triggering a six-figure tax event.

What separates the people who navigate that moment from the ones it derails is rarely income, and rarely net worth. It's the presence or absence of a few months of liquid, accessible, boring cash.

The families with 6 to 9 months in reserves are interviewing selectively, negotiating from positions of optionality. The families without are selling at distressed valuations, accepting the first offer regardless of fit, financing the gap on revolving credit at 24%. Each of those decisions compounds against them for years. If you want the full framework for building your own cash reserve —> read the deep-dive here.

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz deteriorated further this week. Oil crossed $100 again Thursday as Iran's new supreme leader issued his first public statement confirming that attacks on Gulf Arab targets would continue and that Iran intends to hold the Strait closure as leverage.

The U.S. Navy acknowledged it will not escort tankers until the risk of attack is materially reduced. Oman evacuated its Mina Al Fahal terminal, removing roughly one million barrels per day from accessible supply.

One waterway, 21 miles at its narrowest, is repricing a material share of the global economy. The chokepoint was always there.

AI disruption concerns have likely peaked for SaaS. The software selloff has two overlapping causes that the market has conflated.

The market was simultaneously pricing in AI capex collapsing from weak ROI and AI adoption becoming so pervasive that established software workflows go obsolete. Both cannot occur at once.

The valuation compression is real regardless: Palantir, Adobe, Salesforce, and ServiceNow are all down in 2026, even as they continue reporting strong earnings with AI acting more as a catalyst than a headwind.

The honest read is that stretched valuations needed a correction, the market found its narrative in AI disruption risk, and the two fears have been feeding each other since.

I got back from Future Proof Citywide in Miami this week. The event drew over 4,000 advisors and finance professionals, with the entire agenda organized around AI as an operating model rather than a feature. The density of tools competing for the same marginal real estate in an advisor's workflow was striking. Three smaller ones worth noting.

Slant, which I already use as my CRM, had a visible presence, good sign that it's gaining traction beyond early adopters.

CurrentClient is a compliant communication platform that gives advisors a dedicated phone line, texting, and CRM auto-logging, so every call and text syncs directly back to your CRM without manual entry.

TaxStatus pulls data directly from the IRS, giving advisors verified tax transcripts, a very useful tool for advisors as we can provide ongoing monitoring that flags audits, penalties, and IRS notices before the client receives the letter.

The pattern across all three is the same: solve one data friction problem precisely, integrate into the existing stack, and let the workflow carry you.

This information is educational and not intended as legal advice. Laws vary by state and individual circumstances. Consider working with qualified attorneys and financial advisors to develop a strategy appropriate for your situation.

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