When the markets are going through big transitions and scary geopolitical events, the moves can be dramatic — a little excitement about the Russia/Ukraine peace talks on Wednesday meant we focused less on maternity hospitals in Ukraine being reduced to rubble, and began to hope that things might turn more peaceful… and oil and gold came back down a bit after their panic highs, and the Nasdaq 100 went up by 4%. A lack of progress from that latest meeting in Turkey between Ukrainian and Russian diplomats brought the pessimism back yesterday, and the Nasdaq 100 fell by 2-3% again, with one of the few bright spots being the announcement that Amazon (AMZN) is finally splitting its stock (as has been rumored for months now).

These are the times that really test your mettle as an investor, especially now that it’s so easy to follow your portfolio minute to minute and obsess over whether or not you’re “winning” in any given moment. And they’re also the days that build long-term returns — the indices generally go up over the long term, but a lot of those gains come from just a few great days… and the great days are often right next to the terrible days. If you panicked on Monday and stopped out of your position in big tech stocks as they collapsed into the afternoon, and bought back in on Wednesday as everything was surging higher and then sold on Thursday as the outlook looked bleak again, you could have easily turned a relatively flat few days into a loss of 3-5%. Do that a few times, and the average annual gains you might see are gone — which is why the average investor does worse than the market average. Resist the urge to trade in and out during times of crazy market gyrations, and you’ll likely be ahead of the game.

I do have some updated thoughts on a few more companies in the Real Money Portfolio to share this week, with a few new “buy below” price updates that I’m using to keep myself somewhat disciplined during a turbulent time, but I want to start with a look at some of the commodity-related stocks that are being bounced around of late. Russia, after all, is among the largest global producers and exporters of a lot of important commodities — especially oil, fertilizer, ...