'We want this volatility to last forever': How day traders kept their cool as the Iran war rocked markets

• Retail investors who spoke with Business Insider weren't panicking during the Iran war.
• Those who were in the market during the conflict say they were scanning for opportunities.
• Some said they were unbothered by the heavy volatility, as it created openings to buy stocks.

Retail money gets a bad wrap as "unsophisticated," but the Iran war has proven that the cohort is adept at navigating volatility.

In a matter of weeks, the war tanked stocks, sent oil prices spiraling, and scrambled the world economic outlook.

But day traders — a group known for their penchant for meme-stock mania and buying any dip — appeared to do just fine. Some even thrived amid the volatility.

While some admitted it wasn't easy to look at their portfolios, retail investors who traded the Iran war said they largely kept their cool as markets whipsawed. Many opted to hold on to their investments, while others jumped on the opportunity to scoop up more stocks at a discount.

"The volatility is a blessing"

Three traders who spoke to Business Insider said the situation in the Middle East has been a helpful reminder: volatility is a trader's friend.

Carmine Rosato, a 27-year-old day trader based in New Jersey, said he has embraced the big swings. When markets are rocky, he starts to scan the environment more aggressively for opportunities, such as checking markets more frequently after-hours.

"I think the volatility is a blessing. When there's volatility, there's a lot of opportunity, it's how I look at it," Rosato, who's been trading stocks for 10 years and says he has no long-term investments, told Business Insider in an interview.

Rosato said he feels some concern when markets go haywire, but he's used to keeping his emotions separate from work and uses risk management tools like stop losses, which automatically exit a trade once losses reach a certain level. He has also recently reduced the size of his trades by around 50% to cut down on risk.

"As traders, short-term traders, we want this volatility to last forever," he said, describing the opportunities and anxiety that often come with volatility as a double-edged sword. "It's kind of almost having FOMO if you're away from it, because you may miss an opportunity," he said.

Bilaal Dhalech, a 30-year-old trader in Toronto, says he's been stressed since the Iran war broke out, but he's using the volatility as an opportunity to hunt for deals.

"It's never fun seeing your portfolio drop 10% in a couple days thanks to the president's tweets," Dhalech said, referring to confusion in markets during the war as President Donald Trump delivered updates on social media.

"It's stressful monitoring the situation when they announce a war and no war in the same hour. Last year with tariffs, I wasn't too worried, but this time felt different," he added.

Dhalech says he has a few coping mechanisms to deal with his anxiety in markets, such as carving out time to step away from the markets to hit the gym or go for a walk. He also talks out his feelings about the markets with his friends and people in his Discord community.

"At the same time, I stick to my long-term plan — buy good companies when they go on sale," he said.

A bird's-eye view of what retail traders did in March shows a textbook case of buying the dip. Individual traders initially slowed their purchases as stocks slid lower last month, with retail daily net flows trending lower each week through early April, according to data from Vanda Research.

Flows picked up on April 8, about a week after the S&P 500 bottomed. A trader who purchased the S&P 500 that week has enjoyed a gain of more than 4%.

The decline in trading activity reflects both a broader risk-off move in markets and the seasonal trend of retail traders pulling back until tax day, Viraj Patel, a global macro strategist at Vanda, told Business Insider.

Importantly, though, traders also "sold the rip." Data from JPMorgan shows that just as retail bought into weakness, they sold into strength, even timing their sales just before new bouts of weakness struck. On March 23, as the S&P 500 spiked more than 2% in a day, retail became net sellers of stocks and ETFs for the first time in nine months.

Minwoo Lim, a 28-year-old trader based in Dubai, said he wasn't stressed at all about investing when the Iran war broke out. As the conflict escalated, he took profits by creating long positions on oil and short positions on gold, which tumbled as markets repriced their expectations for Fed rate cuts.

Lim said he was actively seeking additional investment opportunities and plans to keep looking for deals as volatility continues to wane.

"I don't know where it's going to move to. It's just based on what Trump says," he said of why he still felt a little uncertain about market moves with the US and Iran still struggling to reach a lasting peace agreement.