Investors may want to take a step back as stocks swing amid rising geopolitical tensions.

DBi’s Andrew Beer suggests the market’s crystal ball is broken.

“It’s not normal for big markets to move as much as they are right now,” the firm’s managing member told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “Something is deeply wrong in the market’s ability to forecast the state of the world… The only thing we can all do as investors is: This is the moment to plan and to prepare for the worst. You hope for the best.”

Beer, who has spent more than three decades in the hedge fund industry, thinks it’s remarkable the number of stresses on the financial system over the past 12 to18 months hasn’t caused things to spin out of control.

“You just you have more geopolitical risks stacked on top of each other today [and] more economic risk factors than I remember at any time in my career,” he added.

Beer urges investors to ask themselves how they would act if a 2008 or 2022 market downturn happens again.

“These financial assets are, they’re an investment, but they’re also what you need to survive, to live on, to retire, and so it’s the very real human side of it that I hope people will focus on,” he added.

According to Beer, investing like it’s 2025 could turn into regret.

“The best thing to do in 2025 was just turn off your computer beginning of the year and come back at the end of the year, and you’ve made money, your stocks and your bonds and everything else,” he said. “It won’t continue like that. We will go through a more difficult period.”

Recent moves in gold, silver, bitcoin and crude oil underscore how difficult it has become for investors to calibrate portfolios, especially as sharp reversals unfold over short periods of time, according to Beer.

“No one has a playbook for that,” said Beer, who is also watching for signs of strain in private credit, insurance company portfolios and other corners of the market where unusual stress could begin to spread.

NovaDius Wealth Management’s Nate Geraci highlighted exchange-traded funds that are designed to offer portfolio protection — particularly managed futures ETFs.

“This is absolutely something that is a longer-term allocation, and I almost view it as portfolio insurance,” the firm’s president said in the same interview. “You want that insurance when something goes bad in the market, and maybe that’s stocks and bonds going down together.”

Prices for metals fell sharply across the board Thursday as investors worried about the impact rising oil prices due to the U.S.-Iran war will have on the global economy.

Gold fell nearly 6%, while silver was off 8%. The sell-off extended beyond just those two, as industrial metals like copper and palladium came under pressure, declining 2% and 5.5%, respectively. 

While the selling intensified on Thursday, gold and silver have been falling since the war in Iran began, despite the former being viewed as a safe-haven asset. Surging oil prices have created concerns that inflation will reignite and keep interest rates higher. Higher rates weaken the appeal of the bullion, which is non-yielding. 

A stronger dollar as a result of the higher rates has also weighed on gold, as it cheapens the metal.

“The risks to inflation taking away the Fed rate cuts that were priced in, and seeing interest rate increases across the world, and real rates rising, that has been the drag on gold,” said Peter Boockvar, CIO at One Point BFG Wealth Partners. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield at one point on Thursday crossed 4.300%.

Meanwhile, copper and palladium, after declining at the onset of the war, stayed relatively stable.

But that has changed as growth concerns begin to weigh on these industrial metals. 

Investors can now trade commodities and a Treasury with a popular short-term options strategy.

The Nasdaq recently launched five zero-day options-based exchange-traded funds: United States Oil Fund (USO), United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and iShares 20+ year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT).

“Zero-day to expiration” or “0DTE” refers to a trade which expires in less than a day. It has taken the options market by storm. The volume of S&P 500 zero-day contracts has increased at least 40%, versus 5% in 2016, according to data from the CBOE.

Not everyone is excited about the new ETF offerings, due to the complexity of the trade.

“I’m cautious about these products because I agree they’re problematic for undereducated retail investors that don’t know how to trade the options market,” Dave Nadig, VettaFi’s financial futurist, told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday.

The surge in activity surrounding zero-day options has some analysts worried about a negative impact on the market.

“I don’t think the tools themselves are inherently breaking the market,” Nadig said. “Like most market structure things, it’s not a problem until it is.”

Nadig also said he believes that most of the contracts are coming from hedge funds, not retail investors.

“This is largely institutions, hedge funds and day traders, using these as short-term leverage speculative vehicles with the extra added bonus that they never have to settle,” Nadig said. “I think most individual investors probably don’t have any business in here at all. They’re naturally very speculative because of the inherent leverage.”