What to Watch (And What to Ignore) When Markets Panic

How to filter signal from noise when everything feels urgent

Government shutdowns. Tariff threats. Market corrections. AI disruption. Your competitors are pivoting, posting, and panicking. Meanwhile, the founders who’ll dominate your market in 12 months are doing something different: they’re ignoring most of it.

The competitive advantage in 2025 won’t go to the founders who react fastest to every market tremor. It’ll go to the leaders who protect their strategic positioning while everyone else burns focus on noise. Most of what’s generating anxiety doesn’t change your competitive battlespace, your resource constraints, or your path to market leadership. But some signals absolutely do—and missing them is how you get blindsided.

This week, I’m breaking down the three lists every fintech founder needs: what to ignore (because it won’t change your competitive position), what to monitor (market shifts that matter but don’t require immediate action), and what to build (counter-cyclical positioning moves that separate you from the pack while competitors retreat). These aren’t new frameworks—they’re applications of the battlespace mapping and resource assessment strategies I’ve been sharing, applied to the current chaos.

Here’s what makes this different: I’m not predicting the future or telling you to time the market. I’m showing you how to use the strategy frameworks you already know—battlespace mapping, resource triage, constraint-based execution—to maintain competitive momentum when everyone else is frozen. The founders I work with who navigate volatility best aren’t the most informed. They’re the most disciplined about where they direct strategic attention.

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Today’s Agenda:

🎯 The Ignore List: External chaos that doesn’t change your competitive position
📊 The Monitor List: Market signals that actually affect your battlespace
🔨 The Build List: Strategic positioning moves while competitors retreat
💼 Briefly: Fintech funding collapse, zero-click crisis, budget reality checks
⏱️ Up & coming: Why going quiet beats going viral in volatile markets

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💼 Briefly

💸 Fintech payments investment collapsed in H1 2025. After nearly doubling to $30.8B in 2024, investment tumbled to just $4.6B in the first half of 2025—a level not seen in over a decade as investors steered clear of $1B+ M&A transactions. Geopolitical tensions, cost of capital, and tariff uncertainty are driving the pullback. For fintech founders, this means: your competitors with weak unit economics are now running out of runway. That’s your opening. Read KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech H1’25 here.

📉 Zero-click searches hit 58% and organic CTR crashed. New data from Seer Interactive’s November 2025 analysis shows that when Google’s AI Overviews appear, organic click-through rates drop 61% and paid CTR falls 68%. For fintech marketers, this isn’t a future trend—it’s a present crisis requiring immediate strategy shifts. Your SEO playbook needs to expand beyond “rank in Google” to “become the source AI platforms cite.” Read the complete zero-click analysis here.

🤖 AI referral traffic grew 123% but still doesn’t offset losses. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini drove 123% growth in referral traffic from September 2024 to February 2025, but AI traffic still represents only 1.24% of organic search traffic. The good news: early data shows AI referrals convert 4.4x better than organic search visitors, particularly in consultancy-driven sectors like finance and fintech. The bad news: it’s not enough to make up for the zero-click losses. See the AI traffic research study here.

💰 Marketing budgets flatlined at 7.7% of revenue—but expectations are rising. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey shows marketing budgets remain stuck at 7.7% of company revenue, unchanged from 2024. Meanwhile, 59% of CMOs report insufficient budget to execute their strategy. The response: CMOs are leveraging AI and data analytics to squeeze more from static budgets, with GenAI investments delivering ROI through improved time efficiency (49%) and cost efficiency (40%). Read Gartner’s full CMO Spend Survey here.

🎵 My deep work soundtrack this week: I’m using this specific music protocol to maintain strategic focus when everything feels urgent. No lyrics, consistent tempo, noise-canceling discipline. Watch: Deep Focus Music for Work and Study. It’s not about productivity theater—it’s about building the system to execute your plan regardless of external noise.

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⏱️ Up & Coming: The Quiet Advantage in Noisy Markets

The most predictable pattern in market volatility: everyone gets louder. More pivots announced. More hot takes on LinkedIn. More emergency webinars explaining why everything changed. More noise.

Meanwhile, a small group of disciplined operators go quiet—and gain ground.

When your competitors are burning cycles on reactive positioning and public panic, you’re executing the plan you already mapped. You’re using your battlespace assessment to identify the openings they’re creating. You’re applying your resource constraints to make disciplined bets while they’re making desperate ones.

This is where your strategy frameworks matter most. The battlespace map you built doesn’t become obsolete when markets shift—it becomes your competitive advantage. You already know your positioning, your competitors’ weaknesses, and your resource constraints. External volatility requires adjustments, not complete resets.

The founders winning right now aren’t the ones with the best hot takes. They’re the ones maintaining strategic discipline while everyone else loses theirs.

Enjoy my quiet advantage track…

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🔒 Become a Paid Subscriber for the Deep Dives

What you get behind the paywall:

This week’s deep research includes:

1. The Ignore List: What External Chaos to Tune Out — Specific market signals that don’t change your competitive positioning, with decision criteria for filtering noise from strategic threats

2. The Monitor List: Market Shifts That Actually Matter — The 3-4 competitive and market dynamics worth watching, with specific monitoring cadence and threshold triggers for when to act

3. The Build List: Strategic Positioning While Others Retreat — Counter-cyclical market positioning moves, competitive gaps to exploit, and relationship plays that compound during volatility

Each section includes a comprehensive Google Doc research report with implementation frameworks, competitive analysis templates, and the specific positioning strategies our consulting clients use to gain ground during market uncertainty.

Plus: Access to our full archive of research reports, frameworks, and strategic playbooks.