Right. So, the XAR ETF. The State Street SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF. I recommended it a few weeks ago, and, well, it’s actually up. 3.7% up. Which, let’s be honest, is a relief. You spend hours poring over charts, feeling vaguely foolish, and then something actually works. It’s… unsettling. Like, maybe I should be allowed to manage my own finances.
It was doing well anyway, before everything got… more. More geopolitical uncertainty, more defense spending. Apparently, everyone’s gearing up for something. It was up 11% year to date, which is… a lot. I mean, I’m happy, obviously. But it feels… wrong? Is it wrong to profit from potential conflict? I’ve been having this internal debate, which mostly involves me talking to the cat. She’s not very helpful.
And now there’s the Middle East. Honestly, it’s just… exhausting. The news, the worry, the sheer volume of bad things happening. Nobody wants this, obviously. But… (and this is the bit that feels terribly cynical, even to me) …war is good for certain businesses. Specifically, businesses that make things that go boom. Or fly. Or both. It’s deeply depressing, but also… a fact. Units of Ethical Investment Funds Considered: 0. Hours Spent Rationalizing Investment in Defense Stocks: 4.
The U.S. spends more on weapons than the next ten countries combined. Think about that for a moment. It’s… a lot of money. And even if, miraculously, everything calmed down tomorrow (which, let’s be realistic, isn’t going to happen), they’d still have to restock. Apparently, the estimates are in the “triple-digit billions.” Billions! It’s just… numbers are losing all meaning.
Trump and the Golden Dome
And then there’s Trump. He wants to increase the defense budget by 66%. 66%! He wants a “Golden Dome for America” and a “Golden Fleet.” Honestly, it sounds like something out of a Bond movie. Or a particularly alarming dream. It’s… ambitious. And expensive. Trillions of dollars expensive. Number of Times I’ve Considered Moving to a Remote Island: 17.
XAR holds a lot of the companies that would benefit from all this. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Huntington Ingalls Industries. They all sound very… serious. And profitable. I feel a little guilty just typing their names. But then I remember my mortgage and the cat food bill and… well, you get it.
It’s not just the U.S., either. Global defense spending is going up. Apparently, everyone’s feeling a bit twitchy. It’s forecast to hit $2.9 trillion by the end of the decade. Which is… a terrifying amount of money. Money that could be spent on, I don’t know, schools or healthcare or something vaguely useful. But no. Weapons. Always weapons.
XAR is fairly diversified, which is good. No single stock makes up a huge chunk of it. And the expense ratio is reasonable. 0.35%. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is probably less than I spend on overpriced coffee each month.
So, is it morally questionable to profit from global instability? Probably. Am I going to stop? Honestly, probably not. War is terrible, obviously. But peace through strength… and a well-diversified portfolio… might be the only way to survive it. And maybe, just maybe, afford a slightly nicer brand of cat food.
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2026-03-11 16:42