The stock market isn’t ignoring Iran. It’s rising for these three very real reasons

The U.S.-Iran war drags on with no sign yet of a peace deal. Someone needs to tell the stock market.

After a small early drawdown near the outset of the war, the S&P 500 has rebounded to all-time highs, closing above 7,400 on Monday for the first time ever even as oil prices remain at elevated levels.

Some say the equity market is ignoring the coming impact of the war, fueled by speculative activity. But it’s more than that.

There are very real fundamental reasons for the comeback, including an economy much less reliant on oil to power it, strong company margins with energy costs as just a small input and tech companies whose businesses are insulated from the impact powering S&P 500 earnings forward.

The index has made short work of recovering from its March low, having rebounded roughly 17% from around 6,300 in just a little over a month.

When the U.S. first struck Tehran on Feb. 28, the S&P 500 slid only about 8% peak to trough. In other words, it didn’t even fall into a correction — defined as a fall greater than 10% and less than 20% — that theoretically would follow an energy shock rippling through the global economy.

At its height, since the conflict started, oil has climbed above $120 a barrel, and was last above $100. Gas prices have surged above $4.50 a gallon at the pump, and is above $5 in many states.

Many investors chalked up the market’s resilience to duration, meaning a hope that companies can navigate supply chain disruptions from the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz so long as they are temporary, and not so severe.

But with stocks rallying even with the U.S.-Iran conflict in its third month, it’s time to take a look at more constructive explanations.

Here are some of them:

Low company impact

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, the damage has already been done. Experts in the field expect that it would take weeks for ships coming out of the oil passage to reach destinations in North America, Europe or East Asia. And even after they’ve done so, higher oil prices aren’t expected to return to where they were before the crisis, meaning businesses and consumers around the world will be dealing with greater pricing pressures for some time.

But when it comes to the U.S. market, many companies won’t be much affected by the change, at least according to their latest earnings calls. A Trivariate Research review of 1,465 earnings transcripts since the start of March found that only 10% of the entire market cap of the U.S. equity market expect a negative or even mixed impact from the U.S.-Iran war. The firm said that that 10% approximation is, if anything, an overestimation.

For investors, what that means is that the S&P 500 could continue to do well, even if certain parts of the market suffer. Trivariate Research is especially wary of the consumer discretionary sector, where a number of companies have already come forward on the impact the war is having on the consumer. Those companies that have posted multiple contraction year to date are also names to steer clear of, such as certain software companies, the firm said.

Magnificent tech profits

The latest earnings season also underscored the importance of another pillar of the bull market: artificial intelligence.

Indeed, the largest companies in the S&P 500 are now the most extraordinary they’ve ever been from an earnings standpoint. Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Slok pointed out that the 10 largest companies in the S&P 500 now account for roughly 34% of the index’s total profits, doubling from 17% in 1996. JPMorgan’s trading desk pointed out last week that earnings for the Magnificent Seven companies are outpacing the other 493 S&P 500 stocks by more than 40%, to levels not seen since 2014.

To be sure, that massive concentration unnerves investors mindful of the risk in relying on just a handful of names. But the acceleration in earnings during the first quarter reporting season from tech giants, with quickly-expanding use cases for AI, and ballooning capital expenditures, has investors confident that market concentration is a feature, not a bug, and that the fundamental story in AI is intact.

Oil independence

There’s also the fact that the U.S. economy is less oil dependent than it’s been during past crises. Antonio Gabriel, global economist at Bank of America Securities, said in a note last month that the U.S. only needs about a third of the oil it needed back in the 1970s to produce the same amount of GDP.

Even if the war in Iran escalates, any 10% oil price shock will have just a quarter percentage point impact on inflation today, as opposed to the 0.90 percentage point effect it had back in the 1970s, Gabriel noted.

“A repeat of the 1970s appears as an unlikely scenario,” Gabriel wrote.