“I think it’s close to over, yeah.”

So said Donald Trump while chatting about the war with former CNBC “money honey” (that was before such monikers were considered uncouth)-turned MAGA booster Maria Bartiromo.

“I mean, I view it as very close to over,” he went on. “If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take [Iran] 20 years to rebuild their country.” (Congratulations?)

Trump’s comments to Fox Business were likely to help equities sustain, if perhaps not build on, a rally that has the Nasdaq riding its best streak of gains since 2021 and saw the S&P trade with 12 points of a record on Tuesday.

There’s the chart. For all the drama — the flaming tankers, the missile volleys, the drone swarms, the downed US warplane and, tragically, the further destruction of Iranian and Lebanese life and property — the S&P 500 never even made it into a proper correction.

This is one of those instances where I’d be doing myself a disservice not to say “I told you so,” grating as that surely is for some (many) of you.

On March 30, I called the de-rating in the S&P “meaningful.” “While no one’s definition of ‘cheap,’ [the index] isn’t overtly expensive in the post-pandemic context,” I wrote, in that linked article.

The S&P bottomed within hours and proceeded to rise in nine of the next 10 sessions. I told you so. “Feel the market.”

Of course, this isn’t an “all’s well that ends well”-type situation. Especially not for the thousands of people killed in the Mideast since late February. And traffic through the Strait’s still throttled, only now by the US Navy instead of the IRGC.

But as I’ve been pounding the table on since March 29 (the day before the S&P bottomed), Trump was likely to take the “win” and come home sooner rather than later. And as I wrote on March 31, the first day of what, 10 sessions later, was a near complete recovery for the S&P, his instinct to wind down the conflict without ground troops was right.

You can add as much cautionary color and as many caveats as you see fit. “A significant portion of the buying is driven by positioning and hedges being lifted,” JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke remarked.

He included the simple figure above, which just shows that Tuesday saw the second-highest call-option activity of the year.

“These rallies consistently generate remarkable enthusiasm among investors willing to pay significantly higher prices,” O’Rourke wrote. “Investors need to be confident that the 23.5x forward earnings are not peak earnings.”

Granted. Point taken. Etc. But those are questions about market fundamentals, not the war — questions about whether it made sense to pay what people were paying for US shares before the bombs started falling late in February.

When it came to trading the actual conflict — or any conflict — it’s a matter of having a good sense of the combatants’ decision calculus. And tuning out the mainstream financial media chorus (to say nothing of “doomer” blogs), because much as they’ll insist their primary goal is to inform, their business is to monetize web traffic. They’re not trying to make you money. They’re trying to make money for themselves off you. Never forget that.

In a separate interview with ABC, Trump suggested he may not even need to extend the two-week ceasefire in order to get a lasting truce with Iran. “I think you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead,” he said. “I really do.”

During his sitdown with Bartiromo, Trump did Americans the service of explaining why this was all necessary in the first place. “If they had a nuclear weapon, you would be calling everybody over there ‘sir,'” he said. “And you don’t want to do that.”

It goes without saying that Trump could wake up on the wrong side of the bed — assuming he still sleeps at all — and ruin the rebound. And it’s also entirely possible that the end of the conflict’s already priced in. Blink (fret) and you missed it.