Just watching how the Iran situation is spooking markets right now, and honestly, it's a classic Wall Street overreaction moment. Oil's jumping, people are worried about inflation, the Fed might pump the brakes on rate cuts — the usual playbook when geopolitical tension flares up.

But here's what most investors miss: we've been here before. A lot.

I came across this analysis from Carson Group looking back at 43 major geopolitical and historical events since 1940. The pattern is pretty clear. Yeah, these events create short-term chaos and volatility spikes. That's real. But when you zoom out and check where the S&P 500 landed 12 months after each event? It was higher roughly two-thirds of the time, averaging around a 3% gain.

Now, 3% is nothing to write home about compared to the market's long-term average. But the point isn't the return — it's that in most cases, the market shook off the shock. Businesses adapted. The economy kept moving.

The other thing worth noting: we're looking at valuations through a Shiller PE ratio lens right now, and yeah, the market's expensive. Historically expensive, actually. Only been pricier once in the last 155 years during the dot-com bubble. So there's legitimate reason to be cautious about entry points in general.

But that's different from saying the Iran war will crater stocks. History suggests it won't. The uncertainty is temporary. What matters is whether you're buying quality at reasonable prices, not whether you're buying on the day geopolitical headlines spike.

Markets hate uncertainty in the moment. But uncertainty always passes. That's the real lesson from 86 years of data.